Last Light Shining
by EnchantedWorlds
Summary: Narrowly escaping the Nogitsune, the pack barely gets time to regroup before they face new threats and old foes they had never expected to see again. Season 4 Alternate Universe: Allison lives.
1. The Calm Before The Storm

Scott had had heard the footsteps a while before he heard the knock on his bedroom door. Currently Scott was engaged in his chemistry homework laying sprawled across his bed typing on his laptop, so he had not gotten up to check who it was. He had a feeling who it could be though, and it was someone he would rather not have a conversation with right now. In fact he would like to never have the conversation they were about to have, and that said conversation would never be needed.

But Scott McCall also knew, that he very rarely got exactly what he wanted. The last year had proved that perfectly, so he sighed heavily and saved his work before he got up from the bed. He opened the door to his room, to find exactly who he had been expecting.

"Hey," Allison said quietly. She had a bag over her right shoulder and a cask around the other arm. He knew there were more bandages around her torso, but luckily the purple shirt hid those. Scott did not like to think back to that night at Oak Creek, not at all.

"Hey," he replied a little louder and took a step back to allow her inside. "So-" he began not knowing exactly what to say to her.

"5 hours," she said as if she had read his mind. Allison was clearly avoiding his eyes, he understood why. "We´re headed to the airport afterwards, I just wanted to save you for last." Her teeth were biting in her bottom lip, and he could hear her heartbeat race. A lot quicker than it usually did.

"Okay," he said. He had a lump in his throat, and if he was honest it was very tempting to just reach out and wrap his arms around her, but he was worried about her reaction so he didn´t. He wasn´t entirely sure what to say either, so instead he just tapped his fingers awkwardly against his desk.

"I´ll- I´ll miss you," Allison said, her voice shaky. That´s when he decided to ignore his previous concerns, and instead step forward and wrap his arms loosely around her, careful not to touch where her bandages were. She clutches him tighter, and buries her face in his shirt. It is the first time in a long while, a very long while, that he has seen her so vulnerable. He wants to say something to her, but he doesn´t know what. She is not his girlfriend anymore, she hasn´t been for the last 6 months, not since before summer break. And now- now she is leaving, and he might not see her again in a very long time. Scott just wants to figure out something to say to her.

"I´ll miss you too," Scott said, and he swallowed hard trying to get rid of the large lump in his throat, and when he let out a low sound, he knew he was crying. He inhaled sharply and kept holding her carefully.

"It´s okay," Allison said shakily. "I am in the arms of my first love," her voice was lower now, almost as if she was talking to herself. She looked up from where her head had been resting against his shoulder. "The person I´ll always love."

"I love you too," Scott whispered into her ear. They both knew what it meant, if it had been some time ago it might have meant something else. But now he understood his feelings for Allison better. He still loved her, still cared about her, but he wasn´t in love with her anymore, and from the look on her face when she met his eyes, she felt the same way, if he had to make a qualified guess.

"So," Allison slipped out from his careful hold. "I should probably get going."

"Yeah," he agreed a little awkwardly. "You wouldn´t want to be late at the airport." Allison walked towards his door again, and Scott walked with her downstairs. She effectively avoided his eyes, and he decided it might be a good thing. There was a relatively high risk, he would start crying again, if she actually did meet his eyes.

"I´ll skype you when we get there," Allison said quietly, before she wrapped the arm that was not in a cask around his shoulders again. Scott hugged her back, and sent her a quick smile as she approached the car where her Dad and Isaac was waiting. Isaac had decided that he wanted to go to London for a while, originally he had wanted to go with the Argents to France. That was until Mr. Argent had reminded him that the Argents in France were particularly less liberal than he and Allison had been of late. That had made Isaac reconsider his options.

He had tried to explain it to Scott. That he liked being a part of Scott´s pack, and it really was exactly what he had wanted since he became a werewolf. But Derek was still there too, and as much as Isaac wanted to be the bigger person and just forgive him for how massively he had screwed him, Boyd, Erica and to some extent Cora over, he didn´t think he would be able to do that any time soon.

"So," Isaac had ended his argument. "I think I better stay away for now, because you obviously want Derek in your pack and I don´t. Besides I have some distant family in London." Scott had replied that he did understand that. They hadn´t seen Derek for the last month, but he would probably show up at some point again, and the last thing Scott wanted was to have to keep the two werewolves from attacking each other. Which was likely to happen if Isaac stayed.

When the Argents´ car disappeared at the end of the road, Scott went inside again. His mother was out of the house, otherwise he might have talked with her. As it was he really wasn´t what exactly to do. It felt like he had lost something, that nothing was ever going to be the same. Which was a strange and unwelcome feeling for him. The last time he had really felt like that, was when he had become a werewolf. Something he really hadn´t wanted. In the same way he didn´t want this change now. But worse things could have happened, and he was happy they hadn´t. He didn´t even want to think about, how much worse things could have been.

* * *

Lydia Martin inhaled sharply, and refocused her gaze on the road again. She still had a lump in her throat, the last thing left from the recent goodbye she had said in the airport. Granted, she had said goodbye to Allison the previous day, by spending the entire day watching movies, talking, and doing quite a lot of hugging. The last thing not being something Lydia usually did very often.

But even though she had said her goodbyes to Allison yesterday, she hadn´t said no, when Allison had asked if she wanted to come along to the airport. It had been really sad, even though Allison had already promised to skype her on practically a daily basis. Allison was the first really close friend, Lydia had had in what felt like forever. The first person other than Jackson, who she had actually allowed to see her behind her façade, and yes Kira wasn´t terrible and Stiles was okay, she might even tolerate Malia, but none of the friends she now had left in Beacon Hills were Allison.

Lydia refocused on reality, when her phone rang. Lydia took the call, put the phone on speaker and threw the phone down on the seat beside her. She had already checked the caller id, and she had quite a good idea about why he was calling.

"For the last time Stilinski I am not an encyclopedia, call Kira if you want to know stuff about Nogitsunes and Kitsunes," she was more than slightly irritated with the amount of times Stiles called her on exactly that topic.

"Lydia, I do call you about other things," Stiles replied clearly offended.

"No, and the topics discussed in your last 15 phone calls to me prove that," Lydia retorted.

"Wow you´re in a terrible mood," Stiles mumbled, probably to himself.

"Why do you think?" Lydia couldn´t resist replying with a snap.

"Oh," it seemed it just dawned on Stiles. "I´m so so sorry Lydia, I really didn´t think about that." Stiles and Allison had said goodbye almost immediately after her father had originally decided they should move, and Stiles didn´t have a particularly close relationship. This was different for him, than for her or Scott.

"Unsurprisingly," Lydia replied dryly. She looked on the road, and thought she might have seen something on the side of it. Something that looked oddly familiar, but before she could think any more about it, Stiles talked again: "You still there?"

"Yeah," Lydia replied, her eyes still scanning the side of the road. Whatever she had seen seemed to be moving. Maybe it was just a jogger or something. At least she knew it wasn´t a dead body that would have involved screaming by now. "Just thought I saw something."

"What?" Stiles asked, but before she could reply, previously mentioned something stumbled onto the road, about 10 feet ahead of her car. Lydia immediately braked the car, and practically flew out of it. Things falling onto the road near Beacon Hills hadn´t exactly been a good sign in the past.

As she had had gotten half way, she noticed the phone was still in her hand, and that Stiles still was asking what was going on. Lydia didn´t reply though, and instead turned the unconscious form of what appeared to be a human around, from where he or she had fallen face down on the asphalt road.

It was getting darker, but Lydia still clearly recognized the beaten up face belonging to Derek Hale. How had he ended up here? Last she had talked to Scott, he had no idea where any of the Hales were. (Lydia had taken a particular interest in knowing where Peter was.)

"Lydia, what´s going on?" Stiles asked again, as she could slowly focus on things that weren´t Derek.

"Call Scott," she snapped at him.

"Why-" Stiles began.

"Would you just call him?" Lydia immediately cut him off. "I found Derek."

Author´s note: What do you mean Allison didn´t move to France with her dad? Seeing as this is my own personal AU for how I want season 4 to go, I can do what I want. I am still planning on basing it very closely on the released spoilers for season 4, with the same villain etc. I´m not entirely sure what will become of the new characters yet, but we´ll see. If you enjoyed this I would love you if you left a review.


	2. New Faces

Lydia wasn´t entirely sure if it was a good thing, that only the Jeep appeared on the road ten minutes later. She was at the very least very strongly considering punching Stiles, if he hadn´t called Scott. Luckily Scott´s bike did appear behind the Jeep shortly after, and Lydia didn´t have to resolve to such desperate measures.

The moment she had hung up the phone, she had started struggling with getting Derek into her car. There was nothing on the backseat, so she had figured it would be an okay place for an unconscious werewolf. It wasn´t the first time, she was happy it had been so easy to guilt trip her Dad into getting her a bigger car, than her parents had originally planned to get her.

The bike and the Jeep stopped at practically the same time, and both Stiles and Scott approached her where she was waiting by her own car.

"Lydia are you okay?" was the first question Stiles asked, once Scott approached the unconscious Derek.

"I´m fine," she replied her eyes focused on Scott by the car. "Derek´s probably not though."

"He is actually," Scott said, turning back towards her and Stiles again. "I don´t think he´s hurt beyond the bruises, and he´ll heal from those eventually. How did you find him Lydia?"

"He just stumbled onto the road a few feet ahead of me, and collapsed," Lydia said. "No idea where he came from," she added, when she noticed the questioning looks, both Stiles and Scott was sending in her direction.

"Well then," Stiles said after a few beats of uncomfortable silence. "I guess we just have to wait until Sleeping Beauty is done sleeping then."

"Seems like the best plan," Scott added. "We can take him back to my house." Lydia thought that was a good idea, and since Stiles didn´t disagree with it either, she got into her car and headed towards Scott´s house. Both the Jeep and Scott´s bike was closely behind her.

Derek didn´t make a noise or moved in the ten minutes it took to drive back to Scott´s place. Lydia wasn´t sure if that was a good thing or not, she really didn´t know that much about werewolves, other than the things she had picked up since she got involved in all this mess. Any voluntary supernatural related research of hers was usually centered on Banshees, another thing she didn´t know so much about. It turned out, that werewolves, witches and vampires all were a lot more popular myths than Banshees were.

Once they arrived, Lydia followed Scott and Stiles inside, they were balancing Derek between them, and Stiles mumbled something along the lines, that it would be a lot more convenient if Derek could walk by himself. Scott pointed out that Derek was still unconscious and unconscious people usually didn´t walk, which luckily made Stiles stop complaining. Once they had Derek placed on the sofa, the three of them stepped outside again. Stiles excused himself, and drove home but Lydia still stood beside Scott for a few more minutes.

"Scott?" she asked, once Stiles was out of sight. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," he replied. "You?"

"I think so too," Lydia said with a small smile. "I didn´t expect to miss her already."

"Neither did I," Scott admitted.

"She said something," Lydia continued. "Before they went through security in the airport. She said if something bad happens, if we need help, we should call her. Because then they´ll come back. She said they´re not abandoning us."

"I didn´t think she would," Scott replied with a small smile. He had known she wouldn´t.

* * *

Bobby Finstock´s life had not been particularly easy the last year. There had been suicides on the Lacrosse field, the bus they had taken to their cross country meet had broken down, so they had to spent the night in a slightly creepy motel. The latest incident of his endless lack of luck had been getting shot in the stomach with an arrow. But he dared say, that the Asian girl who was currently walking behind him as he walked down the side of the Lacrosse field, was one of his greatest trials so far.

Kira Yukimura, he remembered she was called, had been showing up for the last week, asking him if she could be allowed to join the team. He had told her that they didn´t take girls on the team, that was just not the way it worked.

"Coach I know," she had obviously argued, the instant he had finished explaining it to her. "But you saw my cross-country results. Besides Scott helped me learn how to play." Bobby sighed heavily, he should have known McCall was mixed up in this in some sort of way. He always seemed to be mixed up in things, him and Stilinski.

"Fine," he finally surrendered. She had done exceptionally well in cross-country. And he would like to win the title again. He had been worn down over a week after all, otherwise he might have had more willpower. "You can get one game, but you better be good." The girl grinned widely, and for a moment he was slightly worried, she might hug him. He was really uncomfortable with that sort of emotion. Luckily she didn´t and just thanked him instead. He was particularly more comfortable with that.

"If you want a kit, I think we have a spare one," he said before the girl took off again. She sent him another grateful smile, before she as he had predicted took off. A moment later Danny showed up beside him.

"What was that about coach?"

"The girl- the girl wanted to join the team," Bobby explained. Danny sent him an odd look.

"Okay," he accepted it without asking any more questions. "Didn´t think we had girls on the team, but okay." Well apparently we do now, Bobby thought to himself. That was when he noticed that Johnson had just missed for the third time in a row, and his focus was entirely centered on the game again. Luckily Greenberg wasn´t playing today, he was in the hospital for getting knocked over by McCall yesterday. Sometimes he really wondered why he let Greenberg play at all.

* * *

After Kira had picked up the lacrosse kit Coach had mentioned, she was planning on heading home. She knew Scott had said goodbye to Allison today, otherwise she might have called him, but she had settled on leaving him alone for today. Kira would be lying if she said she didn´t feel a little uncomfortable about this whole Allison situation. She knew that Allison meant an awful lot to Scott, but she didn't know exactly how that felt like. Scott was too be honest her first real crush, she had had boyfriends before, but this was different.

Firstly Scott wasn´t officially her boyfriend. They spent a lot of time together, but they had never really discussed exactly that. Kira avoided the topic, and Scott seemed to do so too. She didn´t mind though, she liked the way things were. They hung out, did their homework together and lately she had convinced him to teach her how to play Lacrosse.  
Kira noticed two lacrosse players, who had apparently left the field early. They looked younger than her classmates, but she wasn´t sure. It was too far away to be able to tell probably. In fact she probably wouldn´t have paid attention to it at all, if they hadn´t been heading back into the school. Which was more than slightly weird to be honest. The library was closed, classes had ended several hours ago, and Kira knew from experience that lurking around the school too much was a really bad idea. At least if you wanted to survive to the following day.

Despite knowing that perfectly well Kira decided to follow them, if nothing else to figure out, why they had just entered the school. The thought crossed her mind, that it might just be something completely innocent. There was a small chance of that wasn´t there? Or maybe not, it was Beacon Hills after all, and despite the fact that no one had noticed her for a quite a while when they moved here, a lot of stuff had happened since that didn´t convince her anything was entirely harmless in Beacon Hills.

Kira was quite good at staying quiet, as she followed them towards the cafeteria. That had been one of the things her mother had focused on, when the two of them had been training. She had to admit, that she still didn´t trust her mother entirely, but the training had helped her get more control of her skills.

The two guys were talking together, but they were mumbling in such low voices, that she couldn´t hear what they said. Sometimes she really wished being a Kitsune came with a super hearing ability like being a werewolf did. So she just continued to follow them instead, because they were clearly making an effort not to be loud.

They entered the cafeteria, but Kira stayed outside of it listening through the door. Their voices were clearer now, and she knew none of them were her classmates. Because she didn´t recognize either of them.

"Liam what are we doing here again?" one of them asked.

"Just wanted to see if those rumors are true dude," the one called Liam replied.

"Are we talking about the ghost rumors again?" the other one asked clearly annoyed with his friend. "You know ghosts aren´t real right?"

"You have a thicker skull than Michaels, Mason," Liam replied also kind of annoyed with his friend. "World´s full of possibilities." It sounded like such a cheesy line that Kira almost cringed just hearing it.

"Yeah maybe, I´m just not a big fan of getting detention from wandering around the school after it´s closed," Mason replied. Kira could hear his footsteps slowly heading in her direction. He was not that resolved at leaving apparently.

"It´s your loss when I find a ghost," Liam yelled after him. Kira could hear Mason was getting quite close to the cafeteria door, so she hurried away. After all looking for ghosts did seem kind of harmless, so she just swung the lacrosse kit over her shoulder again and hurried in a different direction to Mason. Explaining why she was here to would be kind of difficult after all.

Author´s note: So when I wrote the outline I will admit to having debated whether the new characters from season 4 should be in this fic at all. I ended up settling on that they should. As last time I hope you enjoyed it, and a fair warning you might not want to get used to this update speed. Because I can far from guarantee it will continue in the future.


	3. Waking Up

The bright light was the first thing that met Scott when he opened his eyes, which resulted in him immediately shutting them again. After a moment of consideration, he slowly opened his eyes again. For a moment he wondered, why he had been asleep on the sofa. That was until he spotted Derek on the sofa opposite of him, and the events of last night came back to him.

He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, before running his fingers through his hair. Scott had fallen asleep plenty of times on the sofa, but he had never thought it was that comfortable. The sofa was only for two, and his legs had been hanging over the edge of it.

"You awake?" his mother paused in the door opening from the kitchen.

"Yeah," he rubbed his eyes. "I´m awake."

"Good, because you have school in thirty minutes. Mind if I ask you something?"

"Shoot," Scott said. He had gotten up from the sofa, and went out into the kitchen to get breakfast. Before he had been a werewolf, he had been able to skip breakfast. That was just one of the things that had changed.

"What´s Derek doing on the sofa?" his mother asked, walking after him into the kitchen again. "I found you said, you didn´t know where he was."

"Lydia found him last night," Scott explained.

"He doesn´t look too well," his mother said, shooting a worried glance towards the living room.

"He´ll be okay," Scott assured her. "Werewolves can heal from a lot of things." His mother didn´t comment on that, but he knew the thought at least crossed her mind. The things he might have healed from without telling her. She had seen him get shot, and be fine afterwards after all. Scott just sent her a quick smile, and finished the cereal he was eating. "I better get ready."

The topic wasn´t exactly one, he wanted to discuss with his mother. No matter how much he wanted to allow her to be a part of this. She already worried more about him than she needed too, and Scott wasn´t interested in giving her even more reason to do so.

"You´ll keep an eye on Derek, while I´m at school?" Scott asked before going upstairs.

"Do I have a choice?" his mother asked, but she was smiling. That made Scott confident, that she wasn´t that mad at him for leaving Derek on the sofa without asking her. At least that was something.

* * *

Kira caught sight of Scott, when she was headed to the Lacrosse field once her classes were over. She set into a run to catch up with him and Stiles, who were discussing something.

"Hey," she said, once she caught up a couple of seconds later, and both boys greeted her. She settled on walking beside Scott. Both of them were already wearing their lacrosse kits, and had apparently already been to the changing room.

"Did you manage to convince Coach?" Scott asked nodding towards the lacrosse kit she was carrying. Kira nodded with a wide smile. "Great," he added. "You should get to play if you want to."

His hand slipped into hers like it occasionally did. It was a nice feeling, and Kira couldn´t help smiling. Coach had told her after Econ that she could just bring the kit and maybe play once with the team. Of course he had only told her that, because Kira once again had specifically asked. It was a little weird that there wasn´t a lacrosse team for girls, but maybe there were too few interested. That wasn´t going to stop her though.

They reached the field, and Kira took a seat on one of the benches unpacking her gear. She had heard, that it took a really long time, before you were actually allowed to play a game. So maybe it was a little strange, that Coach had let her be part of the training so quickly. But on the other hand stranger things had happened in this town in the couple of months she had lived here.

Stiles sat down on the bench beside her a moment or so later, as she was getting her elbow protectors on. He didn´t say anything at first, just sat there swinging his legs back and forth. Lydia had explained to her, that Stiles was completely incapable of sitting still. Something Kira had observed too.

"You´re not playing?" Kira asked, turning her head towards him.

"Nah," Stiles replied, avoiding the look she sent him. "Scott´s the one who´s good at lacrosse. I just got lucky one time." Kira didn´t ask further, she knew Scott thought Stiles was good at lacrosse. But it made it easier to get to first line, when you had abilities like Scott´s, or her own for that matter. It was probably also easier to get back in, she knew neither Scott nor Stiles had played on the team for a while with the Nemeton, Darkness and the Nogitsune. Stiles had not at all since before they did that sacrifice, or at least that was what Scott had told her. He really hadn´t been fit to play with the sleep deprivation and then the Nogitsune possessing him.

So the two of them watched Scott play instead, Stiles got called out to practice shooting for the goal, and since Kira had finished putting her kit on, she had nothing to do. Coach was walking towards her, with one of the players walking beside him. They were clearly discussing something, and Coach was practically flailing around with his arms. That was when Kira thought, she might have recognized the player, but not from her visits to the lacrosse field over the last week. No, she recognized him from last night, or at least she thought she did, it had been very dark yesterday. The player might be Mason.

"Coach, I know Liam was supposed to play first line today," Mason said, as Kira focused on the topic of their conversation. "He wouldn´t just miss something like that."

"Well then where is he?" Coach said for once not gesticulating wildly.

"I really don´t know," Mason retorted. "I haven´t seen him since last night." She had to admit that caught her attention. Liam was the one who had decided to stay in the school last night looking for ghosts. She remembered how she had thought it was harmless. Maybe it was harmless, there was a chance it was harmless. Lydia had not screamed yesterday, Scott would have told her. So that at least meant he hadn´t been killed.

"Yukimura!" the Coach called out for her. "You wanted to play?" Kira practically jumped up from the bench and sent him a smile.

"Yeah, yeah I did Coach," she said, half running towards the field, shooting Scott a slightly awkward smile. She could think about all this later, then she would also be able to ask Scott. That would be better and easier. Right now she just needed to focus on convincing the Coach to keep letting her play lacrosse.

* * *

_Derek Hale really liked this library, you could go there practically until midnight, and it was really useful when you like him needed to cram for an exam two days later. The library was practically empty, and it echoed every time he tapped his pen against the table he was sitting by. It smelled like books and coffee. Yes, he definitely liked this library more than the high school´s library. _

_He had a deal with Laura, that she would pick him up around midnight when the place closed, so he really wasn´t that surprised when he heard heels echoing through the room. She usually wore high heels, especially because their mother thought they were impractical. Her steps were quick and confident, she seemed like she needed to hurry. He could smell her too, so he was sure it was her. Derek just didn´t like doing that, it was too weird. Even though he had been able to all his life. Laura´s footsteps suddenly stopped, and Derek looked up from his book. _

_"Derek?" her voice cracked and she had such a shell-shocked look on her face, that Derek felt a sting of worry. "You´re okay." The last statement was whispered, but obviously he could hear it. He rose from his chair and took a few careful steps towards Laura. _

_"Laura?" he began quietly. He felt like he was approached some kind of wounded animal that might lash out. "Laura what´s wrong?" _

_"Derek," it surprised him, when he saw the tears shimmer in her eyes. What didn´t surprise him was how hard she looked to be biting her quivering lip. "I have to tell you something." _

_The scenery switched and that was when Derek knew this was a memory. Either that or a dream. Nothing else really made sense. But then again, he was born a werewolf so what did he really know about things making sense. It was still night, but this time he was sitting in a car. It seemed a familiar scenario again, and when he looked to his right there sat a girl beside him with a tense look on her face. He almost thought it was Laura, just for a moment or two but then he realized who it was, Cora. Her eyes flickered across the road, and she was clearly looking out for something. But Derek wasn´t sure what yet. _

_Then he remembered, they had left Beacon Hills a week ago, and were currently being tracked by a band of South American hunters. He hadn´t known why back then, just that they were looking for the she wolf. Now he had a sneaking suspicion he knew. It was just blurred in his mind, like something he couldn´t quite remember probably. _

_Suddenly he heard a loud noise, and he remembered that the car driving on the other side of the road had suddenly taken a turn, and driven out right in front of them. Derek had practically been standing on the brake, but at the same time, he had twisted the wheel to the side, and the car had taken a turn towards the fencing on the side of the road. _

_He remembered, that they hadn´t been able to stop the car entirely before the car had hit the fencing. Derek tried to start the car again, but it didn´t work. And there were several other cars surrounding them on the road, Cora gained his attention by pulling his arm. _

_"Derek!" she snapped, already on the way out of the car. "We need to go." He kicked the other door open, and quickly got out of the car and set in a run after her to the opposite side of the road. It turned out to be unfortunate for him, that he was the one that was behind. Because he felt something heavy slam into the back of his head, and he tried to keep his balance. Then suddenly the scene changed again, or at least he thought it did. _

But suddenly there was bright light hitting his eyelids, and he had a feeling that he wasn´t dreaming anymore. He decided to try and open his eyes, which resulted in a realization that he was currently lying on a sofa in what looked like a living room. Once he smelled the room, he remembered who´s living room it was. But how exactly had Derek ended up in the living room belong to Scott McCall when the last thing he remembered was a warehouse? When he saw Scott next time, he definitely had more than just a few questions to ask him.


	4. Arising

Malia was waiting by his Jeep, just as Stiles had suspected she would be. That was how their arrangement worked. He picked her up, they drove to his house and he tried to help her catch up on the eight years of curriculum she had missed. Stiles had briefly considered asking Lydia, if she wanted to help, but had ended up deciding she probably wouldn´t. Lydia hated tutoring, and it was hard enough to just get her to help him, and he was particularly better in school than Malia currently was.

"Hey," Malia said taking the seat beside the driver´s seat. "Good training?"

"Yeah, Kira convinced Coach to let her play," Stiles told her.

"Good for her, but does the lacrosse team take girls?" Malia asked, as they begun to drive out from the parking lot.

"Why, you interested?" Stiles asked, not focusing on her hand on his arm.

"Not really," Malia replied. "I doubt biting people and slashing someone´s face is allowed." A small smile had snuck its way onto her face. She never smiled that much, so occasionally he wasn´t sure if she was actually joking. There was always a possibility that she wasn´t.

"That´s generally looked down upon," Stiles said. "But if it helps us win the cup, I don´t think Coach would mind too much." Malia let out a snicker, and sent him another smile. "You figured out how to divide positive numbers?" he asked her. They had only been doing this for the last month, because it was only since then he had actually been able to help her, so he was surprised how far they had gotten. Especially with his usual complete lack of patience. He had noticed something else. The more Malia learned, the less she seemed to focus on the whole changing back into a coyote. They had originally just started the school thing, because she needed something to do while she and Scott practiced. He figured, that he would ask her why she seemed less focused at some point.

"I think so," Malia replied to his previous question. "Math is annoying though."

"I can assure you, that you share that opinion with 99% of teenagers across the world." Stiles made a left turn down the road towards the end of town, where he and his dad lived. They never had their tutoring lessons at Malia´s house, because there was a high risk Mr. Tate would consider kicking him out the minute he saw him. Stiles had no doubt, the man could still remember the little adventure with the coyote. Secondly Malia wasn´t on amazing terms with her dad, and she liked to get out of the house.

"Your phone is ringing," Malia stated matter of factly, and brought Stiles out of his thoughts.

"Oh yeah it is," Stiles fished it up from his pocket before checking the caller id and taking it. They were holding still for red light anyway. "Hey Scotty how are you on this lovely afternoon?" he asked.

"Derek´s awake," was the first thing his friend said, instead of responding to his enthusiastic greeting. "I think you should be here, to hear what he has to say."

"Probably a good idea," Stiles replied. "Mind if I bring Malia along?" It would take longer if he had to bring her home first, and he was honestly a little anxious to figure out why Derek had been missing the last month. Not that it was unusual for Derek to disappear into thin air, but he was still curious.

"No," Scott said, sounding oddly distant. "That´s fine. Could you call Lydia for me too?"

"No problem Buddy," Stiles said and hung up.

"Something wrong?" Malia asked, once he had dialed Lydia´s number.

"I´ll explain once I´ve talked to Lydia," Stiles replied, just before Lydia took the phone. "Hey Lydia."

"What do you want Stiles?"

"Scott would like to invite you for a tea party," Stiles retorted.

"Shame, my princess dress is at the drycleaner," Lydia bit back, clearly aware that Stiles was joking.

"Okay, I´ll give you that that might not have been my best joke," Stiles replied a little less sarcastic now. "But Scott does want you to come over, because Derek´s awake."

"I´ll be there in ten minutes then," Lydia said and hung up on him. He stared at his phone for a moment before he started the car and drove. Luckily no one else had driven on this road in the time he had been talking in his phone, because they would probably have gone out of their car to yell at him by now.

"Now would you explain this to me?" Malia asked, after she had tapped him on the shoulder. And that was exactly what he did, as he turned the car around and drove to Scott´s house instead.

Lydia had been part of pack meetings before, not that many, but she had been part of these meetings before. But the meeting today looked a lot different than previous ones. First of all Malia was here, which wasn´t that big a problem, but it was still a new face. Secondly neither Allison nor Isaac was here anymore, something she had no doubt everyone had noticed by now. It felt odd, because even though she hadn´t known Isaac that well, Lydia was used to both of them being around in weird circumstances and supernatural crises, and Allison just being around in general. She centered her focus on something else though, she had talked to Allison last night once she had arrived in Paris. Allison was fine, and Lydia needed to focus on something else.

They were all crammed into Scott and his mother´s relatively small kitchen for some reason. Stiles sat on the counter, Mrs. McCall and Mr. Stilinski stood in the doorway, Malia sat on the counter next to Stiles, and herself and Kira were crammed in between the fridge and the kitchen table, in the middle of all of it were Scott and Derek, leaning over previously mentioned kitchen table.

"So you´re saying that´s where she found me?" Derek asked, pointing at the map currently lying on the table. Lydia nodded, when Derek shot a look in her direction.

"You were just kind of stumbling around," she began. "You really don´t remember that."

"A little," he admitted in a clearly frustrated tone. "But it´s kind of blurred, like my memory of what happened in South America."

"With Cora?" Scott asked, and Derek nodded. None of them had a clue what had happened to her, and as much as Lydia hadn´t liked her, she still didn´t like the idea of her being missing. It was the same with everything that had happened to Boyd. Things had never gone back to what they used to be between her and Aiden. Of course she had already known he was an alpha werewolf out to kill her friends, she just hadn´t expected him to actually get one of them killed. It didn´t matter that she hadn´t known Boyd that well either. She had still helped save his life at the Motel, which had turned out to be pointless. Lydia bit her lip, and refocused on the conversation at hand.

"Do you remember anything else?" Stiles asked. "From you know before you were stumbling around by the side of the road."

"Not really no," Derek replied. "Seeing as I was unconscious most of the time."

"Following that logic you should be able to remember the stumbling around, seeing as I have been told unconscious people don´t do the walk thing," Stiles retorted. Lydia rolled her eyes at about the same time Scott clearly did, and Derek shot a glare in Stiles´ general direction.

"Could you save the fighting until later?" Malia added. "Because it would make talking this through a whole lot easier." For once Lydia found herself agreeing with the other girl. But then again there was a first time for everything.

"The last thing I remember is a warehouse," Derek continued his explaining, clearly ignoring the argument with Stiles, which was probably for the best, there was a high risk it could go on for the rest of the afternoon, if none of them stopped it. "It was mostly full, and I was kept in some sort of small room. There were a lot of noise from machines. That´s as specific as I can get."

"Okay then," Scott said, clearly trying to figure out what to do next. "Could you maybe try to remember more? Because that would really help." Derek nodded, and the room fell completely quiet. The whole thing seemed to be settled for now at least. None of them had any more to say it seemed. Lydia was almost about to leave, when Kira took a step forward from beside Lydia. Kira had been quiet the entire time but apparently, she has something to say now.

"Can I say something?" she asked a little awkward about the situation. "It has nothing to do with Derek, I just thought it was a little weird."

"What was?" Scott asked, sending her a concerned look.

"Um, you guys all know Liam right?" Lydia, Stiles and Scott all nodded. "He´s the freshman who´s really good at lacrosse, and he´s missing since last night."

"And that´s important because?" Derek asked his arms crossed.

"Because he went missing at the school looking for ghosts," Kira said in a quiet voice. "I don´t know, if it means anything, but I just thought I should tell you."

"That is okay Kira," Scott said. Lydia wasn´t sure if it was relevant, but things were rarely not relevant. There was usually some kind of pattern in things. "We´ll wait and see." At least they knew that Liam wasn´t dead, really he couldn´t be, because if he had been, she would have screamed. That was her thing after all, what she did when someone had been killed in Beacon Hills.

Once they had agreed on looking into it, if Liam didn´t show up tomorrow or so. Most of them began to leave, Malia did first, then Kira and Derek. Then the only ones left at Scott´s house was Mrs. McCall, Scott, herself and Stiles. Lydia herself was about to leave too, she had promised to call Allison again and give her an update on the whole Derek situation. Because Allison was still curious about it all, and probably slightly worried too. But it didn´t seem as serious as previous crises in this town yet, so Lydia herself hadn´t reached her own worried level just yet.

"Scott, do you mind helping me with something?" Mrs. McCall asked, and Scott obviously nodded immediately and went upstairs with her. That left her alone with Stiles in the kitchen. A Stiles that looked a little uncomfortable to be honest.

"You okay?" Lydia asked taking a step towards him. She could feel a sting of worry, which was unusual for her. But since the whole business with the Nogitsune, Lydia had worried a lot more about Stiles. She wanted to know, that he was getting over it okay. She hoped he was.

"Yeah," he said a little distant.

"Good," she said taking a step back again, realizing she had taken several steps closer to him. "And if you´re repressing something or keeping something to yourself, you better tell me or someone." She knew how badly, it had turned out for her with the whole possession thing and not telling anyone, just because she wasn´t a fan of admitting a need for help. Admitting that felt like a defeat, it was one of her faults, and she hoped he didn´t feel the same way. Because if he did, Lydia strongly considered smacking him in the head.

* * *

Author´s note: Not that pleased with this chapter, but I felt like I should post it. I hope you are still enjoying this story though and I will try to get chapter 5 done as soon as possible. Although we will see how soon, because I am currently more than a little busy.


	5. It Has Only Just Begun

"Stilinski!" Coach shouted, and Scott barely resisted cringing at the loud sound. He looked to his right, and saw Stiles almost falling off his chair clearly shocked by Coach. Stiles did manage to regain his balance last minute, and to his left Scott saw Lydia barely resist a smirk or a laugh.

"Yes Coach?" Stiles asked slowly acting less shocked about this entire thing, and regaining a bit of a composure. He looked to be okay, so Scott wasn´t that worried. He just looked a bit tired, but come to think of it, Stiles had every reason to be exactly that.

"Are you paying attention?" Coach asked, arms crossed and a glare directed at Stiles.

"Of course Coach, why wouldn´t I be?" Stiles asked smiling his most innocent smile. A smile that probably hadn´t worked on anyone since he was 10, not even his dad for what Scott knew. Coach did not come up with a reply, but simply rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. Apparently Coach wasn´t in the mood for arguing with his students, that had to be the first time ever. Instead he continued the class, and Stiles returned to staring intensely at the table in front of him. Like he had been doing for most of the class, and Scott returned to paying attention to what Coach was explaining to them. Econ was one of the topics he wasn´t exactly doing amazingly in, and he had yet to get the grades he wanted.

The rest of the class was uneventful, like Scott had expected it to be. Or like he had been hoping it would be. It turned out that Kira´s warning hadn´t been for anything, because the freshman in question, Liam, had showed up to school that morning, looking like nothing was wrong. Of course by now, Scott knew that very few things were like they seemed, but they had decided to take it easy for now. When Kira had apologized to him, for making them worry, he had just shrugged it off. He honestly couldn´t see there was a reason for them to be mad at her. She had just told them because she was worried. Which was okay with him, he got that.

His eyes darted to Stiles a few times during the rest of the class, his friend looked tired. Really tired, not as tired as he had before, when the Nogitsune had possessed him, but he did look tired nonetheless. Scott decided to mention it to Stiles when he got a chance to talk to him later, without getting shouted at by Coach. But when the bell finally rang, Stiles seemed to hurry out of the classroom, and Scott practically threw his notebook into his bag, so he could catch up with him.

"Hey Stiles," he put a hand on his shoulder, once he did catch up. "Dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I´m fine," Stiles replied sounding much less than convincing. "Why wouldn´t I be?"

"You just seem distracted," Scott said, not knowing exactly what he was implying. "Are you getting over it okay?"

"Like I said, I´m peachy." Scott sent him a long look, telling Stiles that he did see through whatever this was. "Alright so maybe I could be doing better, but I don´t have anything inside of me, that´s planning on brutally murdering anyone I care about anytime soon. So I see that as a strong improvement from my situation a month ago."

"Yeah okay," Scott said, still not entirely convinced that nothing serious was wrong. Especially not if you also took the pieces he had heard of Stiles´ conversation with Lydia in the living room last night. Not that Scott had necessarily meant to eavesdrop, but he did have better hearing than any "normal" human being did. Sometimes he just heard things by accident. "Will you just promise to tell me, if you need help?"

"Scout´s honor," Stiles said and did a halfhearted salute.

"You were never a scout dude," Scott retorted.

"It´s the thought that counts, isn´t it?" Stiles said with a smirk, and Scott rolled his eyes. Why did it seem like things had returned to normal, when Scott had a bad feeling that it hadn´t. He parted ways with Stiles, who was headed to his advanced trigonometry class. A class that Scott still didn´t entirely get how his friend had gotten into, when he bumped into Kira.

"Hey," he said with a smile, pushing the previous worry about Stiles to the back of his head for now.

"Hey," she replied with one of her slightly awkward grins. "I need to stop literally running into you."

"I don´t mind," Scott replied with a smile, and handed her the bag she had dropped on the floor. Both of them were headed to the same trigonometry class. Kira had once complained that numbers of any kind hated her, he remembered having thought that was funny. To which Kira had sent him an annoyed look, and repeated that she was being serious. Which had made him work a little harder to not laugh at her. He didn´t want to upset her.

"Did you end up figuring task 3 out?" Kira asked and pulled him out of his thoughts.

"What- Um yes I did," Scott replied, remembering where they were headed again. "It was kind of difficult though."

"Got my dad to help me," Kira said, sending him a soft smile. She was twirling a strand of hair around her finger, and Scott was not entirely sure why he focused on that. It was not exactly a miracle; she did that when she thought about things. It was one of the things he had noticed. "Scott," she put a hand on his shoulder, a warm small hand. He could hear her pulse quicken. "There´s something I want to ask you?"

"Ask all you want," Scott replied, sending her what might have been a slightly confused look, when she pulled him into a side corridor.

"This is a weird question and I don´t know why I´m asking it," Kira began stumbling over her words. "But do you like me?"

"Of course I like you," Scott asked, still not quite catching on to what she meant. But slowly starting to have an idea. "What do you mean?"

"Do you like me, like me?" Kira asked. "Because I like you."

"Oh you mean-" Scott said, and Kira nodded. He looked at her wondering exactly to do, because he did like her. He even liked her a lot. But Allison had just left less than a week ago, and he didn´t exactly understand why she asked him this now, and it was all more than a little confusing. But Allison had moved on with Isaac, and he had too. With everything that had happened with the Nogitsune, he and Kira had just never had the chance to talk.

"I know it´s weird to ask you that, especially just after Allison left, but I´ve been thinking that maybe you didn´t, and I am not very good at th-" Scott cut her off midsentence, when he took her face in both his hands leaned in and kissed her. He still wasn´t sure, whether this would be a good idea in the long run. But he knew that he liked her, more than he had ever expected to like any girl after Allison. And when he felt the slight pressure of her lips against his, he knew she meant it when she said, she liked him too.

His feet padded lightly against the forest floor, the night was completely silent except from that sound. It seemed like all the animals had fled the woods, or at least stayed out of his way. Which it was, was not really something he cared that much about. The darkness hid him from any human, who would be stupid enough to get out here at this time. But he wasn´t sure anyone would be that stupid to go for a late night jog in this town.

He continued his determined pace to where he was headed. It was finally time to begin what he had been planning for months, the final brick had fallen into place. His goal was the clearing he reached about 5 minutes later. It was a relatively small clearing in the middle of the woods, he would never have been able to find it on his own, so in this case he had depended on someone to find it for him. However much he hated it.

The Nemeton stump still stood out in the clearing despite the dark. The stench of Darach blood did too, maybe humans wouldn´t notice it, but if you knew what to pay attention to you would. It would probably never leave this place. Not that it really mattered, the blood was all part of the triggers he needed. He bowed down in front of the stump, and stroke his fingers over the sides of it. Small green plants were beginning to cover it, plants that hadn´t be able to grow here for a long while. He picked one of the small leaves off and barely contained a smile on his face.

It was perfect now, exactly what he needed to start this entire thing. He continued to pick off the small leaves, the plants would grow bigger, but he could not wait longer. It was time to finally start this, just like he had been waiting for. The thought made him smile.

Her room is dark when she wakes up, and Lydia´s eyes darts confused around. She had a strong nauseating feeling in her head, and she knew something was wrong. Despite all the events in the last year, Lydia had made sure to have a proper sleep schedule. She still had to go to school and get herself to Berkley when high school was over, even though she might be running from monsters at night. So something had to be wrong, for her to just wake up like this. It would just be easier for her to think, if she couldn´t hear that highpitched sound in the back of her head all the time.

Suddenly, it dawned on her what it sounded like. A scream, and that made her eyes fly wide open, because she realized something. She was the one screaming, or wailing to be exact. Lydia only did that when someone was dead. Immediately she was able to stop, almost as if someone had flicked a switch in her head. She got on her feet and switched on her light. There was someone she needed to call right now, because somewhere in Beacon Hills there was a dead body, and she had to find it. She had to find it right now.

* * *

Author´s note: A shorter chapter and I am not sure how happy I am with it, but it is primarily a set up for the next chapter.


	6. Bring On The Night Part 1

Lydia switched on the light, and grasped for her phone on the nightstand. Her room seemed to blur for a few seconds, but Lydia blinked furiously only it was clear again. She had to think quickly, and it was hard to focus with the voices buzzing in her head. Lydia tried to remind herself why she had picked up the phone, she had picked it up to call someone, but who? It was getting harder to focus. Then out of the blue she remembered, she had meant to call Stiles and dialed his number as quickly as her shaky hands would allow her.

"Lydia?" a sleepy muffled voice said on the other end. "Why are you calling me now, it´s like 2 am?"

"I woke up," Lydia replied, taking a heavy breath and focusing on counting to ten. "I woke up wailing," she added trying to avoid sounding panicked.

"You what?" This time Stiles´ voice clearly penetrated the buzzing in her head. "Lydia where are you?"

"Still at home," she replied, teeth biting her lip. "But it´s getting harder to think clearly the longer I am. I don´t want to go find the body all by myself." It sounded like he was running down a staircase, and Lydia realized he had probably been thinking the same thing she had.

"I´ll come and pick you up in 5 minutes," Stiles said a hectic tone in his voice. "Please don´t go anywhere."

"I´ll try not to," Lydia mumbled, and put the phone down on her bed. She hadn´t hung up, she had figured it was probably better that way. Lydia rubbed her temples and tried to focus again, she was going out, she would need to be dressed. It was February, and despite her living in California, it would be cold outside. So Lydia opened her wardrobe and grabbed one of the few pair of jeans she owned. She had been sleeping in a t-shirt and she figured she wouldn´t have to change that.

Once done, she grabbed her only sneakers from their space in the closet and her coat from its spot on the back of a chair and headed down the hallway. For a moment, she was grateful that her mother wasn´t home. That would have caused way too many problems already. Problems Lydia really wasn´t able to deal with.

When she saw the two lights outside she hurried up, had it really been 5 minutes already? She hoped, she wasn´t losing time. Lost time was the worst part of this whole freak show, because Lydia never felt like she could trust her memories, because what important things could she have missed? Lydia preferred being able to trust her own judgment and experiences. She moved her hands nervously, as she locked the door behind her and set into a run towards the blue Jeep.

"I called Scott on the way over here we agreed to meet wherever we end up." Lydia sent him a look, and Stiles lifted his hands in defense. Hands that seemed to blur together with the dark. "What?" he asked.

"You talked on the phone while driving," Lydia said dryly.

"There´s a dead body out there and that is what you choose to focus on?" Stiles retorted, as they drove out on the road. "What a fabulous lack of priorities."

"Well I´d rather focus on that, than the fact that I can sense dead people," Lydia muttered under her breath. She leant her head back a little, it was a nice distraction, talking to Stiles, but her head still felt heavy and the voices echoed through her head, making it hard to think about anything else. "Turn left," she said quietly and the voices finally overwhelmed her.

After that it seemed like nothing existed, nothing but the voices telling her what words to speak. She knew he was next to her, one of the living. It was him she was instructing, but his name had escaped her memory. She just knew, that he would take her where she needed to go.

* * *

The feeling of a life being ended sends its echo through the forest. He lets out a sigh, it´s irritating being so well connected with the forest now. A feeling of annoyance hits him, of course something had to kill a human, right when he needs the forest to be undisturbed for once. The town has a banshee, and he knows the girl will be here soon. She never fails to show up where someone dies, his fault really.

It would be wise to leave the Nemeton, he doesn´t want to lead anyone near here, even if just by accident, the change in the tree´s state and the plants that now grows on it, is his own little secret. The secret that he would do whatever it took to keep hidden, until the time was right anyway.

So he decided to head far away from it, in the direction where the ripples seemed to come from. It was a little like small waves originating from the place a stone had been dropped in the water, well in this case a corpse. He continued in quiet, his paws hitting the ground rhythmically was the only sound he noticed.

When he got closer to where the ripples were coming from, he noticed a smell. Humans, or one human anyway. The other one smelled different, it did not smell like a human being, but it looked like one. If he had to guess, he would guess it was the banshee. They were nearing the sight of the murderer, and he reevaluated whether it would be a good idea to go closer. It might not be. So he stayed in the shadows for a little longer. It was better to do that, rather than risk exposure to the wrong people.

* * *

Stiles cursed under his breath, for letting Lydia run. But banshees in weird trances would apparently run to the dead body, they were looking for. It made a little sense though, before when the Darach had been sacrificing people, Lydia had been driving around in her car. As long as he kept her in sight, Stiles didn´t feel that bad about letting her run. As long as he could see her, he could find a way to help her if she ended up in trouble. At the very least he thought so, or tried to justify her taking off that way.

On the top of the hill, Lydia stopped and Stiles did too once he caught up with her. Her face looked creepy in the dark, completely cold and motionless. Stiles shivered, she didn´t move and finally he looked down on the other side of the hill. He switched on the flashlight, and took some steps towards it, he glanced back at Lydia. She still stood like a statue, she almost seemed to be frozen. Stiles briefly considered investigating the body first, but turned on his heel and walked back up to Lydia.

"Lydia?" he asked waving a hand in front of her face, she still didn´t as much as blink. "Lydia are you okay?" Stupid question because she obviously wasn´t, but he didn´t know if this was a normal banshee thing which was the whole issue.

He considered for a moment what he should do. Stiles had gotten Derek out of a shock before, but that had involved punching or slapping him, and he was not going to do that to Lydia. There was just no way, but he decided that he could shake her shoulders. That would work. If nothing else Scott and whoever he had called afterwards would probably be here soon. Then he could help him figure out what exactly to do.

But Stiles still felt bad about doing absolutely nothing, so he put his hands on Lydia´s shoulders and shook her back and forth a few times. "Lydia? Lydia, please wake up." But Lydia still stood as still as a statue, and stared blankly into space. Stiles bit his lip, of course this would have to happen. Things could never just be simple in this stupid town. He brushed a few fingers across her face, and brushed some of the loose hair behind her ear. Stiles didn´t know why he did that. He hoped she would forgive him, for just leaving her standing here for a few minutes while he checked out the body.

So this time he continued in a determined pace down the small hill, to where the corpse was. Despite the fact that it had barely been dead for half an hour, it was already disgusting. Well, he had expected that, but still kind of hoped it would be less disgusting, his squeamishness around needles and blood extended to dead bodies. Despite the light of his flashlight he couldn´t see that much in the dark, but it looked like whatever had killed the man laying there was some sort of animals. His clothes were torn and ripped to pieces by claws, and Stiles cringed when the flashlight´s beam hit the bloody face. He decided to leave the rest of the investigating to the werewolves and his dad, and got his phone out of his pocket to call to check on Scott, when he thought he heard a low growl.

Lydia´s green eyes met his for the first time since she had gone into the trance shock thing. Which made Stiles realize something, Lydia was awake and from the worried flicker in her eyes, he figured he hadn´t imagined the growl. He ran the last few feet towards her and grabbed her hand, and set in a run back towards the Jeep. While Stiles hated running away, he also knew that if there was something big, bad and homicidal in the forest, two humans wouldn´t have a that good chance without werewolf support, and Lydia didn´t seem to argue. Understandably enough.

"Can´t you run faster?" he asked Lydia, as they continued to run through a clearing towards the parking space. The only car there was the Jeep.

"No," she snapped, and he noticed how she stumbled. He cursed himself for not realizing, she was probably not over the whole wail and trance thing. Her legs were shaking under her, and he immediately felt bad. It didn´t change the fact, that he heard the growl again, and it sounded a lot closer this time. Where was Scott when you needed him?

They finally reached the car, and Lydia jumped in on the seat beside the driver´s seat. Stiles smacked the door behind him, and both he and Lydia sat in complete silence. His heart was definitely pounding in his chest, and if he had werewolf hearing, he was pretty sure he would be able to hear Lydia´s pulse accelerating too. Stiles let out a long breath, the night was completely silent. He heard the growl again, but then it was followed by something else. It sounded a bit similar, but then Stiles realized what it was. It was a howl, the howl of a werewolf.


	7. Bring On The Night Part 2

Lydia knew she was grinning, because she recognized the sound. Clearly Stiles did too after a few moments of confusion. She would have recognized the howl anywhere, even though she had heard several other werewolves, but this was Scott, clearly Scott even. She didn´t really think about whether stepping out of the car again would be smart, but she still did it. Just in time to see Scott appear on the top of the hill, his silhouette faint in the grey light before dawn. His eyes were practically shining red, and behind him she saw another silhouette, whom she guessed was Kira.

Then her eyes darted to the trees on the opposite side of the small crappy parking lot, and saw something else in the dark. It was whatever had made that loud growl before, but it was too sheltered by the trees, for Lydia to make out more than a very faint silhouette. But it looked smaller than Scott, and that confused her for a moment. How could a creature that was smaller than an average sized werewolf kill an adult human, like the one they had seen below the hill? She didn´t like to consider the possibility that something else was out murdering people. In fact she really didn´t want to think about that. It would be much easier if this was the murderer they were looking for.

"Lydia," Stiles tugged at her arm. "Car?"

"Yeah," she said, the world was still spinning very quickly under her feet. It kind of seemed like a good idea to go back inside the car, although cars hadn´t always helped them in the past. "That seems like a good idea," Lydia repeated aloud, and opened the door again to get back inside. Her head was hurting again, but she hated admitting that she had to get in the car. Lydia hated being weak in general, or that there were things she couldn´t do. It made her feel defeated. Regardless she climbed into the car and took a deep breath trying to steady herself. In the clearing in front of her, she saw Kira and Scott running towards the woods.

"You stay there," Scott told Stiles before running on. His voice was slightly muffled because he was outside the car, but Lydia could still clearly hear it. "I don´t want you getting hurt," he added a few seconds later when Stiles had mumbled various protests about this. Stiles was apparently too tired to argue further, and instead stepped into the car beside her with his arms crossed.

"You got grounded to the car too?" Lydia said making her voice more steady, she still felt a little shaky.

"Well clearly," Stiles retorted, but he didn´t sound angry. He probably knew she had heard him and Scott. Either that or he just couldn´t stay mad at his best friend. Lydia smirked slightly, but she insured he couldn´t see it. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Stiles said something again: "I really wish I had other defense tactics than a bat. The whole banshee thing doesn´t come with any superpower does it? I mean despite the whole screaming and finding dead people thing?"

"If it does, I really haven´t figured it out yet," Lydia said. She wondered for a moment, if she should tell him the whole thing with tracking down Peter´s lost memories and finding out about Malia, but decided not to. She doubted Stiles would be too happy to find out he had accidentally become friends with Peter´s daughter or something else. To be honest Lydia really didn´t know what relationship the two had. "Would be convenient though," Lydia said with a sigh.

"Kind of would yeah." Lydia lets out a short laugh without really knowing why, but it makes her feel slightly better. At least that was something.

Scott was still shocked by how easy it is for Kira to keep up with him, especially considering how fast they´re running through the forest after the creature. He sometimes almost forgets that she is a Kitsune, because it´s different from being a werewolf, she doesn´t change shape every full moon for example. But he really honestly doesn´t have time to think about that right now, they´re chasing a creature through the forest in the middle of the night after all.

They´re racing incredibly quickly, so quickly that Scott only just notices the shift in scenery, until they reach a cliff over the town. He´s been here before, and he can see the lights from the town down the hill from them. He ran up here, in the first months after being bitten. The preserve had been a nice place to clear his mind, when he had time for that anyway. His life hadn´t exactly been filled with free time lately.

The creature stopped, realizing it was being chased it and that the only way out was jumping down the cliff. Kira drew the sword she had been carrying out, the silver blade reflected the moon light.

"We´re not here to hurt you," Scott said, not caring whether the creature understood them or not. "As long as you don´t hurt us." He didn´t know why, but the creature seemed somewhat scared, at the very least confused by the situation it had ended up in, it growled lowly. He didn´t like thinking about it as a thing, because it looked too human shaped to be called that.

The air felt tense, but none of them moved. The creature didn´t growl anymore and the only sounds Scott noticed was Kira´s quick pulse, the breathing of the three, and the quick heartbeat of the creature in front of him. Still he didn´t want to move, didn´t know what to do to be honest.

Suddenly something shattered the silence, it wasn´t Stiles and Lydia, but before Scott could figure out what else it was, Kira had twisted on her heel, and pointed the sword towards the creature from the forest. But even she was too slow, because the creature jumped towards her, and Scott set in a run towards them. His claws were already out and a howl escaped his throat, as he managed to push the creature off her.

This one was bigger, and almost blue, but maybe that was just because of the moonlight. He kept clawing at it, as they tumbled around on the plateau. He needed to keep the fight as close as possible to the forest. It was unlikely he would do too well if he fell down the cliff, despite werewolf speed and healing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kira crawl away and locking her hand around her sword again. She had lost it when the creature had jumped her. Now she set after the creature they had originally been chasing, but to Scott´s surprise it took off over the cliff.

He might have had the upper hand in the fight until now, because he hadn´t been distracted, but that now he was the blue one took off back towards the woods. Scott set after it, he had to make sure it wasn´t headed for the parking lot on the edge of the preserve. It was bigger than the one that jumped off the cliff, and he was pretty sure, that neither Stiles nor Lydia would be okay if the creature was headed for them. He hoped it wasn´t.

It turned out that it was in fact not headed back towards the parking lot. The creature kept running through the preserve, and it seemed like it had an incredible stamina, because it was hard to keep up with it. Scott could hear that Kira´s breathing was definitely heaving, and it occurred to him, that she might have been more hurt than he originally thought she had. He felt a sting of guilt in his chest. But she kept running regardless, and he had to admit he was tired too.

But suddenly the creature was gone, and both he and Kira stopped and looked around. Kira´s eyes glowed, Scott knew she could see in the dark as well as he could. The question was just, how had a blue creature, which had been clearly visible just two seconds ago completely disappeared now? He shared a confused look with Kira, as he tried to smell the creature too. There was no scent to pick up on, except for the scents of some deer who had been by earlier. That was weird.

"Can you smell anything?" Kira asked, her voice low, maybe she didn´t want to be overheard, maybe she was just tired.

"No," Scott replied. "Some deer and us that´s all." His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he picked it up to see a text from Stiles. Apparently Stiles had called Mr. Stilinski, since the creature hadn´t been around the parking lot for the last hour. Scott hadn´t really realized it had been over an hour until just now. "Did you see anything?" he asked her, already knowing the answer.

"No," Kira replied, leaning against a tree. "It makes this whole thing seem kind of pointless."

"Well a little," Scott admitted, making one last attempt on catching a scent. "But at least we saw what they looked like." He stretched a hand out towards her and she took it, trying to hide the grateful look. She probably didn´t want to admit, she needed the help. He didn´t understand entirely why, but decided not to mention it. "Knowing what they look like, will probably make it easier to find out what it is." Kira nodded.

"Didn´t you say the Argents had a beastiary?" Kira said after another beat of silence. "Maybe we should try that?"

"I don´t think Mr. Argent has a copy, and Gerard destroyed the original," Scott replied. The forest was again deadly silent around them.

"Seriously?" Kira replied, a bit of disbelief in her voice. "You´re the one left in a town filled with creatures of the night, and they don´t even give you the handbook?"

"Might have slipped her mind. I´m still not sure they actually have a copy," Scott said without commenting more on it. Or Allison might have thought they were done, that the Nogitsune had been the last thing and imprisoning it again would stop the beacon from working. Maybe Allison was optimistic enough for that, he hoped that was the case. Nevertheless, he was definitely going to call Allison now. As soon as he had gotten some sleep. Sleep was definitely his number one priority right now.

* * *

Author´s note: I had some trouble uploading this chapter, but I hope it´s fixed now.


	8. Questions

"You look tired," was the first thing Malia said when Stiles entered the library. "Not planning on turning into a sleep deprived serial killer again, are you?" Stiles made a face at her, and took the seat opposite her.

"Nope, that wasn´t in the plan, but I might if you plan on keep joking about it," Stiles said dryly, finding the math book, he was currently going through with her. The joke wasn´t a very good one, and even though he had made one or two horribly timed jokes in his life, he wasn´t quite ready to hear others joke about the Nogitsune thing yet. It probably meant he had double standards, but he didn´t really care.

She was right about something though, he was really tired, although not as much as he had been over the last months, and most of it probably had to do with the activities of last night. And the police hadn´t had time to probably look at the body yet, so apart from Scott and Kira´s descriptions of the creatures, they didn´t have that much to go on. Which meant he was going googling later, once he was done tutoring Malia, and attempting to not fall asleep in class. The latter was something he had done a bit too often lately.

"Sorry," she muttered, taking a look at the page he had turned too. "Then why are you tired?"

"Videogames," Stiles replied. Malia might kind of be his friend now, and other things too, but he hadn´t decided on how much stuff he was going to tell her. Scott hadn´t decided how much, he thought she should know either. Because other than her mom and siblings´ death, and her having been a coyote for 8 years, none of them really knew anything about Malia. He had kind of had to bring her along to the Derek is no longer unconscious briefing, but he was not sure if he was planning too on future meeting occasions.

Malia rolled her eyes at his answer, but apparently decided not to question it. Which he was kind of grateful for to be honest, despite practice he wasn´t the best liar in the world. Malia´s eyes darted around the library as usually; she had an even shorter attention span than he did. That made the whole tutoring thing more difficult.

"You figured the whole business with Derek Hale out yet?" Malia asked after they had been studying for a few minutes. "It seems like your entire dream team is on the case."

"Well we´re not miracle workers, and Derek don´t remember anything," Stiles commented, twirling the pencil between his fingers. "And are you not supposed to focus on the math I´m trying to teach you?" Malia smirked, the kind of smirk that only she could do, which was a tiny bit distracting, but refocused on the book again. They had already reached 7th grade level, which was kind of amazing given the fact that they had only been at this for about a month. He wondered, not for the first time, why Malia wanted to bother with school work. She was after all planning to turn back into a coyote again, at least as far as Stiles knew. "Why are we doing this by the way?" he asked, not being able to hide his curiosity after a few more minutes.

"I need to know this stuff to go to high school right?" Malia said with a shrug.

"Yeah, but why do you bother? You wanted to turn back into a coyote didn´t you?"

"I think that´s my business," Malia said with a sudden defensive tone and actually focused on her homework now. Stiles decided it wasn´t worth it, trying to get a straight answer out of her. She had gotten about as cryptic as Deaton of late, which was saying something because the vet could be really cryptic when he wanted to.

* * *

Lydia´s head hurt. It hurt a lot. She rubbed her temples and tried to refocus on the text in front of her. She should have gotten used to the morning after effects of wailing by now, but she hadn´t quite yet. Lydia was also sticking to herself tonight for lunch break, the noise of the cafeteria didn´t exactly do wonders for her headache. So she had found a quiet corner deciding to stick to that for now, until lunch was over anyway. She did have Physics after lunch.

It might have been considered ironic that Lydia was reading a book on mythological creatures, more specifically, werewolves. Lydia didn´t care, it was easy to read and she enjoyed pointing out all the flaws in the book, or places where it deviated from reality. The author could have benefited from living in Beacon Hills for a few months.

"Lydia?" Lydia jumped at the sound of her own name, as she saw Danny appear in the doorway to the empty classroom. He sent her an apologetic smile, but kept standing in the door. "Are you okay?" the concern was obvious in his voice. That was one of the things she had come to like about Danny, in the frequent interactions she´d had with him back when she was dating Jackson, he was a nice guy who could joke with Jackson without getting his head ripped off. She understood why Jackson had had him as a best friend.

"I´m fine," she assured him not sure, if she should hide the book. But then again she was Lydia Martin, she could read whatever the hell she wanted. "Just distracted."

"Something new or still those weird trees?" Danny asked taking a step into the classroom. Lydia was not entirely sure it was a good thing he remembered that.

"Something new," Lydia replied and decided that it would definitely be a good idea to put the book into her bag. Nobody knew how many other seemingly random details Danny would memorize. The lunch break was over in a couple of minutes anyway, so it could not be considered odd that she headed to her class now. She swung the bag over her shoulder and got up from her chair.

"Lydia, I know." Danny stated with a blank face. She stopped in her tracks and just stared at Danny.

"You know what?" Lydia asked attempting to sound as innocent as possible. Danny´s statement could have a lot of different meanings, so why did she have a bad feeling that he had just said he knew about the whole supernatural business?

"Jackson told me about the werewolf thing before he left for London," he explained. "That and you kind of just suspect something after a while," Danny sent her a smile. "There has been a few less than subtle moments."

"Yeah, you´re right about that," Lydia replied quietly. She sat down on one of the empty tables, and Danny took the one beside her. Lydia once again reminded herself, that if she was going to have this talk now, which it looked like she would, she would miss Biology. But despite the fact, that she usually attempted to have a perfect attendance record, Biology was one of the topics she was very much ahead on. So Lydia reasoned, that avoiding another crisis on top of the already existing Derek Hale and murder in the preserve crises probably was the smartest course of action.

"How much do you know?" Lydia asked him.

"I know Jackson is some kind of lizard werewolf, and that Scott and Isaac Lahey are werewolves too. Figured out that Ethan and his twin brother were werewolves too, I talked to Ethan about it before he left," Danny explained. That meant he apparently didn´t know about Allison being a hunter, her own status as a banshee, Kira being a Kitsune, and probably didn´t have a clue about Boyd and Erica either. She didn´t know how much of that, she could tell him about. Lydia wasn´t the leader of their "pack," Scott was. But she reasoned she could tell him everything she knew about Jackson at the very least. Jackson had been and still was Danny´s best friend.

"As far as I got it, Jackson was a Kanima being controlled by Matt," Lydia corrected him. Allison hadn´t explained the situation in that much detail, when the two friends finally had had time to talk. Mainly because Jackson hadn´t been Lydia´s favorite topic at the time. "But then he died, and now he´s just a werewolf." Lydia still wasn´t too fond of thinking about that night. There was still a not too small piece of her, that hadn´t quite healed and forgotten that.

"Jackson actually died?" Danny asked. Lydia nodded.

"He´s fine now though," Lydia said quietly. Or he had been last time he had talked to her, she mostly kept it to herself, that she still regularly talked with Jackson. It was a weak spot she had developed, but it was a good weak spot. Their new form of friendship wasn´t dominated by a battle for being the best one, the same way their relationship had been. Instead they both commented on their experiences with supernatural crap with their slightly cynical sarcasm, and Lydia liked it better that way.

"I know," Danny replied. "Just because he moved to London, doesn´t mean he´s not my best friend." He paused for a minute or so, and Lydia almost thought their conversation was over, when Danny asked another question: "What are you?"

"Huh?" She should have seen that one coming though. It was an obvious question to ask, given that her current social circle mainly consisted of creatures of the night, and she had been acting weird when Peter had controlled her.

"I figured you were something since you kept losing pieces of time, and drew those trees and stuff. So what are you?" Danny explained and repeated his previous question.

"Something," Lydia replied with a slight smirk, making Danny send her a glance. "Or to be non-cryptic, a Banshee." But before Lydia could explain herself any clearer, Scott turned up in the doorway.

"Hey Lydia, can I talk to you alone?" he asked, and added alone once he saw Danny.

"Sure," Danny replied. "I was headed to the gym anyway." Which was a dumb lie because he wasn´t carrying a kit. He disappeared out of the room very quickly, before Lydia could even tell Scott that Danny knew about this whole thing. Probably better she told Scott when Danny wasn´t there anyway.

"You talked to the Sheriff?" Lydia asked sliding down from the table and hooked up in her bag.

"Yeah Stiles did," Scott answered, shooting another confused glance in the direction Danny had left in. "He said they think it´s an animal attack, the bites on the body looks like some kind of big animal did it. Other than that, they really don´t know anything. They don´t even know who the victim is yet."

"Not much to go on," Lydia said. But on the other hand the police technicians had only had this morning. More could turn up, although she had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn´t. Things were never that easy.

"It will work out eventually," Scott assured her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah," Lydia replied. "You always say that Scott." But the last bit had more softness in it, than she had intended. Maybe it was because she knew, that Scott would do anything to keep that promise. She wondered when she had started trusting him so much, maybe it was because she had seen it before. But Lydia believed in him.

* * *

Author´s note: I had a lot of fun writing the Danny and Lydia scene. In my personal headcanon the two of them do have a sort of friendship and know each other. And on top of that Danny should just be included in more things. Also I got some response on last chapter, which was really nice of y´all so thanks for that.


	9. Growling

"Is that in any way a helpful description?" Scott asked Deaton as he followed him into his office. They were discussing the description of the creatures from the forest, which Scott had hoped Deaton knew something about. His boss usually at least had some clues to what creatures showed up in Beacon Hills, at the very least he knew how to cheer Scott up a little. Which was one of the reasons he had originally liked working at the clinic.

"A little," Deaton replied, looking at Scott over his shoulder. "But it is inconvenient that you saw them in the dark." Scott decided not to retort with a smart remark at that, it wouldn´t be helping. "And you´re sure Kira thought they were somewhat similar?"

"Completely," Scott replied. "And I think she can see clearer than me in the dark."

"You might be right about that," Deaton said. "It sounds like they are an older and a younger one, if they´re the same species. That would explain the difference in size, but it will take a while to figure out which creature it is."

"Yeah, but we´ll go through the books then," Scott replied. He knew Stiles would go on a wiki trail the same night, and if he asked Lydia or any of the rest of the pack, he was sure they would help too.

"That seems like your best option," Deaton said. "We can only hope this was a one-time incident." But Scott was pretty sure both of them knew, that it was unlikely. After a beat of silence, the bell by the door rang and Deaton headed out to the desk with Scott following him.

The sight that met Scott shouldn´t have surprised him, but nevertheless he was surprised to see Liam, the freshman Kira had been worried about, standing in front of the desk. Liam sent a confused look in Scott´s direction, but otherwise didn´t notice him. He probably knew Deaton was the vet, he was here to talk with. At least Scott assumed hoped that was why he was here.

"What can I help you with?" Deaton asked, not entirely oblivious to Scott´s surprise. He would probably ask about it later.

"I came to pick up my aunt´s dog Lucy," Liam said. "She should be done being treated today."

"What´s your aunt´s name?" was the next question Deaton asked, turning on the screen of his computer.

"Emma Johnson," Liam replied. Deaton checked his files, to see if Emma Johnson had checked in a dog named Lucy, it turned out she had.

"Well that looks to be okay," Deaton said and closed the tab on the website. "Scott will you take him out to where we keep the dogs?"

"Yeah," Scott replied, a bit surprised Deaton didn´t do it himself. But on the other hand, wasn´t this the kind of work Scott was here to do? "Yeah sure. " And then he leaded Liam out to where the dogs stayed.

Scott still had a very clear memory of stepping out there shortly after he had been bitten, and heard all the dogs bark at him. Luckily the dogs had accepted him now, and he could be out here without them going crazy. They hadn´t snarled or barked at him for months.

"You´re Scott McCall right?" Liam asked

"Yeah," Scott said unlocking the door.

"You´re a good lacrosse player," Liam said as Scott opened the door. "I´ll probably be better by the time I reach Junior year, but you know."

"Yeah," Scott said under his breath. "I know." Then they stepped into the room, and all of the dogs were growling as they passed them, it was a low growl, that Scott thought was a little freaky. Sometimes he could feel the emotions of dogs, had something to do with them being evolved wolves according to Deaton. And every single dog they went past felt threatened, but not by Scott, but it had to be him. Anything else didn´t make sense. If Liam was a werewolf Scott would have known.

He hurried up and headed towards the cage where the dog was. He unlocked the cage, and Liam put his hand into the cage to carry the relatively small dog. But then the dog surprised both Scott and Liam, when it buried its teeth in Liam´s hand.

"Ow!" Liam said and redrew his hand, shooting a glare at the dog. "She´s never done that before," he said after a few moments.

"Weird," Scott said. "You want me to carry her?" Liam shrugged and Scott picked up the dog and out of a sudden, it was completely calm. Scott couldn´t remember having worked a lot with the dog, so it probably wasn´t because it was used to Scott. Which begged the question, why didn´t the dog like Liam? It seemed like Liam had been surprised it hadn´t. The dog got into its pet carrier, and Liam paid for the treatment.

"Did he bring the dog here, or did his aunt do that?" Scott asked a couple of minutes after Liam had left the clinic. It had oddly enough felt safer to wait a few minutes, he didn´t know why.

"He did," Deaton replied. "Why are you asking?"

"Was the dog weird in any way? Aggressive or something?"

"No," Deaton said sending Scott a weird look. "Not as far as I remember anyway."

"It just tried to attack Liam when we were out back, and all the dogs were growling," Scott explained. "I haven´t seen them like this, since Isaac came here last year."

"That´s odd," Deaton agreed. "And you´re sure he´s not a werewolf?"

"Yes," Scott said, he really was sure. The moment he first met Deucalion he had known he was a werewolf, and he had discovered the ability a few other times. "I am completely sure."

"What are you doing here?" Derek asked and shot a glare after Peter as he entered Derek´s apartment. He hadn´t seen his uncle since before he got kidnapped, and Derek would have gladly waited longer before he saw Peter again.

"Am I not allowed to pay my family a visit?" Peter asked. "You´re my only living family too you know." Derek shot him another glare, Cora wasn´t dead. He wouldn´t accept anything else, until he had seen her dead body, and he hadn´t.

"I´d prefer it if you didn´t," Derek retorted with ice in his voice. He was sitting in front of the window, an eye on the sky outside, another on Peter. "And Cora´s not dead if that´s what you´re saying."

"Denial is unhealthy Derek," Peter smirked and kept walking towards Derek. If he kept being this annoying, he might have to reevaluate that decision. "You should really see a therapist about that."

"You´re one to talk," Derek shot back.

"True," Peter admitted. "But you have an advantage over me, you got always got those teenagers running around, and Isaac is still your former Beta, if he haven´t given completely up on you." That stung a little, Isaac had apparently left before Derek came back, and hadn´t tried to say some sort of goodbye. But if Derek was being honest with himself, which Derek wasn´t the biggest fan of, it was probably what he deserved after how he acquired his Betas.

"Isaac left with Allison," Derek replied, avoiding Peter´s annoying look. Derek had noticed Isaac liked the huntress, but he hadn´t paid particular attention to it. The only reason he had noticed was that the girl had so definitively been Scott´s girlfriend until a few months ago. But he had other things to do, than pay attention to a former Beta´s love life. "He´s in London, and she is in Paris with her father."

"Can´t really say they left together then can you?" Peter asked, to which Derek only answered with a deadly stare. "It´s a shame though, I´ll miss him and his annoying scarf."

"I have trouble believing that," Derek replied getting up from his seat on the table.

"No one trusts me around here," Peter said with an annoyed sigh. "I´m not a monster you know?"

"Again something I don´t believe," Derek said with crossed arms. They stood in a beat of silence, and just exchanged a long look. "What did you want?" Derek asked.

"As I said," Peter replied. "Family visit." He smirked again, and Derek let out an annoyed sigh. He really didn´t feel like beating Peter up to get him to stop being cryptic. It never worked as well as intended anyway. But it might at the very least wipe that smirk off his uncle´s face.

"You doing okay with the knives?" Allison asks, once she´s explained how her week has been. She was doing fine in France, her French wasn´t amazing despite her family but other than that, she was fine.

"You will be surprised what you can find internet tutorials on," Lydia replied looking up from her Psychics book. One of Allison´s criteria before leaving, had been that Lydia learnt how to handle a weapon or two. Lydia had just shrugged, knowing that her best friend just wanted to do the best for her. Which in this case was throwing knives apparently. But Lydia got it, she had also done everything she could to keep Allison away from rescuing her, in an attempt to keep her safe.

"I once saw a tutorial on how to make the perfect human sized snowman out of ice-cream, so I highly doubt that," Allison replied with a grin. It sounded slightly scratchy in the speakers on Lydia´s laptop.

"How much time do you spend on the internet exactly?" Lydia asked sending a raised eyebrow at the web camera.

"I have an entire secret life there," Allison replied, but she was grinning, and Lydia glared at the screen. It was obvious Allison was lying. "Not that much to be honest," Allison said in a more serious tone. "But I´ve told you how it´s going here, how is it back in Beacon Hills?"

"Deadbeat," Lydia replied a bit too quickly, Scott obviously hadn´t talked to her, so Lydia wasn´t sure what to say. "Looks like you and Isaac were our bad luck charms," she added.

"Or my dad," Allison added.

"I seriously doubt your dad could be a bad luck charm," Lydia said jokingly with a smirk on her face.

"I don´t know if I should cringe of that or not," Allison replied.

"Depends," Lydia retorted with a shrug. Allison laughed, and Lydia snickered. They were silent for a few minutes, before Allison said something again:

"Lydia, are you really sure everything is fine?" she asked obvious concern in her voice, Allison had sworn to protect those who couldn´t protect themselves after all. "Because if it isn´t-"

"We´re okay Allison," Lydia cut her off. "Everyone´s doing okay and Derek is showing his grumpy face around here again. Everything back to normal."

"Yeah, but normal in Beacon Hills?" Allison said with a raised eyebrow.

"We can handle ourselves Allison," Lydia promised her, suddenly very sure that they could exactly that. "You´re on a different continent, so you should worry less about us."

"Maybe," Allison said, but she still didn´t sound entirely convinced. Lydia could work with that though. She knew she could. At least until Scott would talk to Allison, and explain the situation to her. Lydia didn´t know why, but it still felt like the sort of thing to leave to Scott.


	10. Tracks

"So he´s the problem?" Stiles asked, once Scott had explained his encounter with Liam the previous day. Scott shrugged and hooked up in his backpack, he hung his helmet on the bike and headed after Stiles towards the high school.

"I don´t know," Scott admitted after a minute or so of silence. "I don´t think it was a coincidence though." Stiles nodded, it probably wasn´t. Things rarely were. He considered telling Scott about his sleep problems, because he still didn´t sleep too well. But maybe it was just because he was still worried about going to sleep, gotten a bit too used to the thought of sleeping resulting in the Nogitsune taking over. It was a hard lesson to completely unlearn. His eyes flickered to Lydia, Kira and Malia who stood together and talked about something. Kira was leaning on a locker with the two others on either side of her. He figured Lydia might be qualified to giving him advice, after all she had gone through something similar with Peter.

Suddenly Lydia seemed to catch his eye, and she and the two other girls headed in he and Scott´s direction. Which meant their current topic, "Is Liam from the freshman class a murderer?" would have to be dropped for now. Not for Lydia and Kira´s sakes, they had both been in the preserve, but because of Malia. Because Stiles still hadn´t asked Scott his opinion on the telling Malia stuff policy.

"So Biology," Stiles ever so smoothly switched the subject, secretly cursing at how idiotic it sounded, once Malia and the other girls were in hearing range. Scott shot him a weird look, a little confused about the sudden switch of topic. He had every right to be, but suddenly the dots seem to connect in Scott´s inner dot-to-dot book, and he shot Stiles a look. The annoyed eye roll that Scott usually reserved for when Stiles was arguing with Isaac too much, apparently it´s appropriate use had been extended now.

"Dude, you haven´t told her?" Scott asked. Stiles was about to come up with a smart ass answer, but presently he didn´t have a useful one. "She knows the stuff about Derek, why not the rest?" Again Stiles couldn´t come up with a good answer, so instead he just left it to Malia to ask the inevitable question.

"What rest?" Malia asked, and Stiles definitely caught the disapproving look Lydia sent him. Lydia knew more about being kept in the dark, than the rest of them did. Clearly she didn´t like that he had chosen not to tell Malia. After all she did know about supernatural things, she was a were coyote after all, and the more he thought about it, the more it didn´t make sense that he hadn´t told her. Malia could be a great help tracking the creatures in the forest.

"You know Lydia´s a banshee," Scott began his explanation as they headed towards the main building of the school. Malia had to slow down a bit, because Kira and Scott were walking slower. "She wailed two nights ago, and we found a dead body in the preserve. It looked like some kind of big creature had attacked."

"Do you know what?" Malia asked, she could probably guess the answer though. It would be a no, considering it had only happened two days ago, they hadn´t quite reached "We know what the problem is, let´s solve it" mode yet.

"No," Scott said, and Malia did not look surprised either, just like Stiles had predicted. "We saw it in the woods, and me and Kira chased it trying to figure out what it was. But before we could, something else attacked us, and the first one ran."

"We could try to track it," she suggested once Scott was done explaining it. "Kind of used to tracking things by smell and stuff," she continued with a small smile.

"Not sure that would work," Lydia said. "It´s been almost two days, and the tracks could be decaying because of other animals and the weather by now." Stiles knew they would be, if only by a little bit.

"Well," Malia said, shooting Stiles a glare. "I guess that´s what you get for not telling the coyote girl sooner."

"If you think you have a shot you should try," Scott added in, before Stiles could come up with a comeback. "We might find something useful."

"You never know," Kira added, and thereby said something for the first time in the whole exchange. Stiles suddenly noticed that Kira´s left hand had slipped into Scott´s, but decided not to comment on it, and just leave it alone. There were more important things, than his best friend´s current relationship status. Well for now anyway, he would definitely bug Scott about it at some other time. Besides if they continued this for much longer, they would be late to Biology and he and the teacher already weren´t the best of friends. Which was his relationship with most teachers to be honest.

* * *

Scott hit the brake of his bike, and Malia let go of him and jumped down on the forest floor. He had agreed to take her to the forest, since Stiles, Kira and Lydia were doing research and homework this afternoon. Before they had driven out here, he had explained what he suspected about Liam. If they found any scent that reminded them of him, then the suspicion would definitely grow, and it would be a lot more likely that Liam was involved in some way.

The preserve was just as quiet as usual, as soon as he switched the motor on his bike off. Malia´s eyes were already darting around the parking lot, and Scott gestured for her to follow him through the forest in the direction he and Kira had ran two days before. Scott wasn´t sure if the police was still working the crime scene, but if they were the rest of the forest would have to do. He didn´t want to mess up Sheriff Stilinski´s investigation. It would also be just a bit hard to explain why he and Malia just happened to be tracking near a crime scene. It wouldn´t be the first time Scott could potentially be caught sneaking around a crime scene, but he had a feeling, that with his dad still hanging around, it would be a lot more difficult to get out of without giving an explanation. An explanation Scott was not sure he could give.

"Hey Scott?" Malia dragged him out of his thoughts. "I thought we were tracking, not memorizing the shape of every leaf on that tree." Scott realized he had stopped walking, and hurried towards her.

"Is that even possible?" he asked, to which Malia shrugged.

"Werecoyotes exist, so who knows right?" They continued for a while longer in silence, both smelling and searching for tracks. Malia had some practice from her time as a coyote, but at the same time Scott couldn´t help but think, that it would be an awful lot easier to track down this thing, if the Argents had still been in town. Both Allison and her dad were excellent trackers, and he and his friends had benefitted from that on multiple occasions, especially the night Boyd and Cora were running around in the woods.

He had been meaning to talk to Allison, he had actually been just about to call her last night, to tell her about the murder in the woods, but then he had stopped himself. It felt weird, like something he was not supposed to do. They had left for a reason, to get a new start and it had barely been more than a week since they arrived. You didn´t call someone who was getting a fresh start after a week, trying to get them back to the place they had just left. Allison needed her space, and he was determined to let her have it, at least for now. He told himself, he would call her if things got really bad, but to be honest he wasn´t sure he would.

A sudden oddly familiar and fresh scent ripped him out of his thoughts, and Malia looked to have noticed it too. It seemed to be coming from a more northern direction, than the one where they had originally been heading. Scott wasn´t entirely sure if it was Liam, but what he was sure about, was that it was one of the two creatures that they had tried to follow. There was only one way to find out if it was Liam though.

"This way," he gestured to Malia, and they both went in the direction of the scent, still looking out for other signs of something, or someone for that matter, supernatural creatures having been around. Both himself and Malia stayed quiet now, they didn´t make much noise either, the upside to being out tracking a creature and being a werewolf or a werecoyote. The flipside was of course that they were tracking a murderous creature, which had managed to overpower Kira two nights ago.

The northern end of the preserve had a lot fewer trees, which was why it didn´t make sense as a hiding place, at least not in Scott´s mind. There was a highway running along the northern edge, and in between here and the highway, the terrain was mostly flat too. He had been out here a few times. After he had become a werewolf, he had started testing how long he could run. It was a lot longer than it had been before, now that he no longer had to worry about his asthma. But despite having been out here before, and more than once, he strongly suspected Malia knew the terrain better than he did.

After they had walked for a few more minutes, they noticed the tracks. Branches were broken in half, and footsteps from some sort of animal were visible on the muddier forest floor. Their walk only continued for less than a mile more, before the tracks stopped. It was not like they slowly got fainter, they just sort of disappeared.

But what now met their eyes was a lot more interesting, because it looked like some kind of hide out. The scent was stronger here too, and if it had not been completely empty, Scott would almost have thought that the creature was here. Malia bowed down and moved into the hide out, Scott wondered for a moment if he should follow, until he decided to do so. He wanted to see what the hide out did hide; maybe it could be something useful. Scott hoped it was.

It almost looked like a bat cave, well the animal version of a bat cave anyway. The hide out was obviously being used by the creature he and Malia had been tracking, because there were signs of something living there scattered across it, a pile of sand where something had rested and footprints too, and not all of them animal. Unless humans just had happened to stumble in here, that made it even more likely there was a shape shifter.

"Take a photo of it," Malia told him. Just when Scott was about to ask her, why she couldn´t do it, because if it had been anyone else they would just have done it, Malia explained herself. "The first week I was home, before I got sent to Eichen House I broke the shower head and the fridge door. Let´s just say my dad doesn´t trust me with expensive objects."

"Okay then," Scott obliged to her request and took photos of several of the footprints. Some of them were set with shoes on, so maybe that could be useful in some sort of way. Just when Scott was about to stuff his phone back into his pocket, the loud cartoony wolfhowl, Stiles had put as his ringtone echoed throughout the hideout. Malia shot him a glare, and Scott shrugged. "Stiles´ fault."

"Scott?" Lydia answered on the other end, quite a bit of panic in her voice. Something it was a long time since he had last heard in the girl´s voice.

"What´s wrong?" was the immediate question he asked.

"It´s-," Lydia began slowly. "It´s Kira, something is seriously wrong."

* * *

Author´s note: this took a while, I´m sorry about that. First I had a problem on how to execute the Scott and Malia scene, and then the next problem arose in the shape of a huge 8 page paper followed by a english final. But I wanted to get this out to you before I leave for Italy on Monday, because I´m not sure you´ll have another update before that. Hope you enjoyed the chapter.


	11. Scratches

Author´s note: this took me a while because of the whole vacation thing, but you should be seeing the next chapter pretty soon, as I completed a rough draft of it earlier. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

* * *

_His head was slammed against metal, and if he had not already been half awake, he certainly was awake now. His eyes flickered open to a mostly dark room, he could just barely make out the size of it. It wasn´t exactly quiet, the noise of machines echoed through it, the room was small too, giving him a claustrophobic feeling. A hand was removed from his face. It smelled distinctively like flowers, but Derek couldn´t decide which flowers it was, but it kind of smelled like perfume. Who the hell wore perfume on their hands?_

_"__Sorry darling." He faintly recognized the voice, but he wasn´t exactly sure where from. He could not see whoever spoke, because the room was too dark for that. Either that or the speaker stayed out of view. "I´m afraid your beauty sleep has to wait."_

_"__´you going to show yourself?" Derek asked after a beat of silence, doing his best to sound threatening, which considering his current state probably wasn´t working too well. "So I know who to rip to shreds when I get out of this?"_

_"__You don´t recognize my voice?" whoever spoke said with pretend hurt in her voice. It was obviously a woman, he could hear that now, and it was obvious that she was mocking him. "After everything the two of us have done and been through Derek?" She paused apparently still not moving, or not moving into view anyway. _

_"__What do you want?" his eyes almost sliding shut again, the pain in his head consistent, as well as in his arms where they were tied up. The rope was boring its way into his wrists, but it would keep doing that, so he focused on something else. Namely the location of the speaker, wherever she was in the room. _

_"__A lot of things, I kind of want a new apartment with a view, or a new leather jacket, but from you-" she paused and for a moment Derek was confused as to why, until he saw her step in front of him. _No, how the hell? _But before Derek could process it probably Kate continued to talk. "-from you I´m just interested in a few locations, more specifically where you´re hiding Peter and Cora."_

_"__Why?" Derek asked, trying to glare at her, but it was nearly as intimidating as he had hoped he could make it. Which probably wasn´t that surprising given his current condition. _

_"__Wow that serum really did a number on you didn´t it?" Kate asked annoyed. He was clearly not telling her, what she was interested in, which Derek considered a small victory. "You still don´t remember who I am."_

_"__I remember just fine," Derek retorted and again coming across weaker than he liked, he would be sure to rip Kate apart if he ever did get out of this. Both seemed like achievable goals, but as it was he was weak. "Just still doesn´t make sense why you´re interested in Peter and Cora." Kate sighed, and tapped her fingers against her side impatiently. She clearly thought he was catching on too slowly, he didn´t know what she had expected. After all she had been the one to drug and beat him up. At least he assumed she was. _

_"__All in good time sweetheart," was Kate´s reply and with a smirk, she stepped away from him again only to press the button of an electric system, which made Derek growl in pain._

Derek´s head definitely slammed against the wall now, and he realized he had fallen asleep. Not exactly a smart thing to do with Peter on the loose. He rubbed his eyes and looked around. The dream had seemed very realistic, but Derek couldn´t immediately remember why. It had seemed like something that had happened before, like something he had experienced. But when? And why couldn´t he remember until he woke up just now?

Then suddenly it hit him all at once, his memory from the whole being kidnapped thing was returning. And so was the very unpleasant memory of Kate being his captor. Kate! Kate who was still alive! He had to get to Scott as soon as possible. He remembered his encounter when she had originally captured him, and the blue thing she had turned into, something he knew for a fact was not a good thing, even if he didn´t know exactly what the blue thing was. He needed to get to Scott, and he needed to do it right now. Unfortunately Derek didn´t have a cell phone, he had had one before his capture, but he had lost it wherever he was captured. Which meant he just had to find Scott instead.

Derek practically jumped down the staircase into the larger room on the ground floor of his apartment. He set into a run towards the huge door to the flat, when something suddenly got in his way. Or rather someone, because someone burst through Derek´s door from the other side, just when he was about to open it, and Derek slid backwards from the force. Derek heard a growl and realized it came from the intruder, and Derek´s claws extended from his hands.

* * *

Lydia was keeping her distance, standing a little away from the table where Stiles and Scott helped Kira walk to, Kira´s legs were weak, and she had almost fallen when they had gotten out of Lydia´s car. Lydia could see that Kira hadn´t been too happy about letting them help her, probably why she hadn´t mentioned it in the first place. It would probably have even worse if it had been Allison, and Lydia would not have been surprised.

Scott rolled the legs of Kira´s jeans up, which revealed jarring red scratches on both her legs. But they were also blue and purple, and they gave Lydia a bad feeling, a really bad feeling. The skin around the scratches had the same blue color, and even though they were thin, they looked deep. Kira winced when Scott´s hand accidentally brushed against one. Stiles took a few steps back, Lydia remembered he couldn´t handle blood or needles, and instead Deaton stepped towards Kira. His arms were crossed, and he had a thoughtful look on his face clearly trying to figure it out. Which meant he might be close to their level of knowledge about the scratches, which probably was not a good thing.

"Any ideas?" Malia asked. Lydia had barely noticed her here until now, but naturally Malia was here, since she had been with Scott in the woods.

"None," Deaton admitted, he still looked like he was thinking about what was wrong. And probably didn´t find Malia´s questions helpful. If it had been Lydia in Deaton´s shoes, she definitely wouldn´t have. But Lydia decided not to make the other girl be quiet, and resumed to listen to Deaton´s conversation with Scott and Kira.

She got the full story about how Scott and Kira had been attacked in the woods, she might have gotten it before, but that night was a tiny bit blurry in her memory. The whole banshee thing could be really exhausting, especially when she ended up in the weird trance. Apparently they had been surprised by a second creature, which had managed to scratch Kira. It was the scratches that were the problem. Deaton had asked if Kira was the only one who had been hit, but according to Scott, he had hit too. But the wounds he had managed to receive, had disappeared again. He had healed, just like he was supposed to, which made it all the weirder that Kira´s hadn´t.

"Could it be a Kitsune thing?" Stiles asked still keeping a good distance. "Don´t they heal like werewolves?"

"They do," Kira said and cringed again when Scott removed her leather jacket to reveal another scratch going over her shoulder. Scott sent her an apologizing look, and Kira just gave him a reassuring smile. Lydia wondered what exactly was going on between them, despite Lydia actually spending time with Kira now, she never talked about much. Just like Lydia kept a lot of stuff to herself, and then of course Malia who was on a whole other level of secrecy. Lydia missed the openness she had developed with Allison. "Should do anyway," Kira added afterwards.

"It looks like some sort of infection," Deaton said. He took a few steps back before he continued: "I am not entirely sure what is coursing it, it could be the claws are just poisonous to Kitsunes. But since we haven´t managed to figure out what creatures we´re dealing with, nothing is certain yet. However I do have something that might help with the pain and beat down the infection." Deaton walked into one of the other rooms of the clinic, and now Lydia definitely noticed the tense silence. It hadn´t been as noticeable before, when Deaton had been talking but now it was. Lydia glanced around and saw the worried looks on the other´s faces. Scott was definitely worried sick, Stiles was doing that thing were his face was slowly resembling the color of a sheet. If Deaton didn´t cover up Kira´s scratches soon, he was probably going to faint. Malia looked to be deep in thought; maybe she was still wondering why they were helping someone wounded. Lydia wouldn´t be surprised, it had taken them a little while to get her to not follow the rules of the animal kingdom biblically.

Finally Deaton returned with what looked like a mixture of various herbs in a bottle. They looked to have been smashed together to create some kind of thick goo. Lydia was more than slightly glad, she was not the one that had an infection to beat down. He asked Scott to help him apply the mixture to the various scratches, and asked Kira to sit as quiet as possible. She definitely looked about to protest, once Deaton applied the mixture to the first scratch on her leg. But she grasped the table tightly, and gritted her teeth. Then she seemed to relax, and sat silently for the next couple of minutes, as Scott and Deaton finished their job. It seemed like it would be okay now, as Kira got up from the table and could stand on both her feet. She was not in perfect shape now, still a little bit unsteady, but Deaton assured them that she would be soon enough.

Scott helped Kira outside the clinic, intending to drive her home. The rest of them followed them outside, it seemed like they had avoided another crisis. At least for now, and tonight for now was good enough for Lydia.


	12. The Thing About Girls

Author´s note: I am sorry this took a long while, I have a huge problem with writing when a show is on. I hope you enjoy this chapter, but I think at least one of my reviewers will enjoy this chapter.

* * *

Stiles shot a look to Malia on the seat beside him. "Why couldn´t I drive her home?" Lydia rolled her eyes, and looked at them from the backseat of the Jeep. Malia sent her a look, which said that even Malia had understood why. And unlike Stiles, she had an excuse not to understand it. But then again Stiles was a teenage boy, and in Lydia´s experience, teenage boys had a lot of trouble understanding how girls thought. They weren´t always amazingly perceptive.

"Kira wanted Scott to drive her home," Malia stated, and put her feet up in the front window, settling more comfortably in her seat. Stiles let out a heavy sigh, and it was clear they were going to start an argument. Which Lydia´s slightly tired head, did not want to have to deal with right now.

"Yes I realize that," Stiles retorted. "But if you didn´t notice it´s barely ten minutes since she was practically collapsing from pain." He did have a point, but Deaton´s magic thing had clearly helped her, which had eliminated the problem in Lydia´s book.

"Yeah, but she was fine now," Malia argued, clearly not understanding why Stiles was disagreeing with her. Her argument made completely sense to her, and she expected it to do the same to Stiles. That was the kind of moment it was obvious that Malia had been a coyote for 8 years.

"It´s really not that complicated," Lydia added, saving Malia from the argument. "Kira thought she was okay, and she doesn´t want to be treated like she is made out of glass." Malia nodded in agreement.

"Yes but Scott was just trying to take care of her," Stiles argued, apparently still not getting it. Now it was Lydia´s turn to sigh heavily.

"Again true and she knows that. But it was largely the same thing with Allison. She just doesn´t like feeling weak or useless," Lydia continued her explanation trying to be as calm as possible. But it always bothered her when guys didn´t even seem to try to understand how some girls thought. Jackson and Aiden had at least caught on to what Lydia wanted and how she thought rather quickly. Even if Jackson had tried to hide that he ever listened to her.

"There are lots of animals who travel in flocks who leave the weaker ones behind," Malia added, calmly stating how animals think. She used that to explain a lot of her reactions to things. "They slow the flock down and makes it harder to escape things trying to eat them, if they have to bring the weaker animals along."

"Maybe not exactly how I would have said it," Lydia admitted. "But the coyote has a point."

"Currently not coyote," Malia retorted. Lydia imagined she was smirking. She wouldn´t be surprised if she was. "But thanks."

"Since when did you two gang up on me?" Stiles asked, as he made a turn and they headed down his street. Lydia had not realized just how late it was, until she saw how many windows were without light down the road. Luckily for her, her mom was away for a week, that meant she wouldn´t have to explain herself when she got home. Not that her mother really cared about the explanation, but she always asked for one anyway.

"Since you decided to be stupid," Malia muttered under her breath. Lydia´s lip twitched upwards, this was getting really interesting, a little bit childish too, which was making it more than a little funny to her. So far she had kept herself from laughing which was always a plus.

"Well tell me how to stop, because this is scary and uncomfortable," Stiles mumbled in response. Lydia couldn´t help the laugh that escaped her, and Malia soon joined in. Earning both of them glares from the Jeep´s driver. Then not so smoothly, Stiles changed the subject and he and Malia talked about the things Malia was learning.

Lydia had noticed that Stiles seemed to be dealing surprisingly well with tutoring Malia, considering Stiles´ complete lack of patience, Lydia had not expected him to. He and Malia were very similar people, both of them were snarky, impatient people with a fair amount of intelligence. But they also spent quite a lot of time yelling at each other, so maybe they were a bit too similar, at least it seemed like that to Lydia. But if they were, it was not her problem. So instead she just leant back in the seat, and tuned out the sounds of the two of them bickering for the rest of the way to Stiles´ house.

Kira unhooked her arms from where they had been wrapped around Scott´s waist and took the spare helmet off. Scott had been worried sick about letting her sit on the back of the bike home, he had wanted to make Stiles take her home in the Jeep, arguing that if she wasn´t feeling entirely well, it would probably be better. That was of course when Kira had become really stubborn, and repeated that Scott could drive her home. When Stiles had been about to drive her home, Lydia and Malia had both shut him up, and reminded him that the three of them needed to study. Kira doubted that they did, but she appreciated that they had helped convince Scott.

"You sure you´re okay?" Scott asked when she had gotten off the bike.

"Yes Scott," she said and couldn´t help herself from smiling. "I´m _fine_." He parked the bike, and followed her towards the door. She wrapped her arms around her middle, and was fine with walking, until suddenly she stumbled, as her knees cracked beneath her and she fell forwards. Scott grabbed her by the shoulders, and helped her back on her feet again.

"Spoke too soon?" Scott asked, concern still ever present in his voice. Kira briefly wondered, if he had always been this concerned about making sure those surrounding him was okay. Maybe it had just come around with his werewolf abilities.

"I might have," Kira replied with an awkward grin. Her eyes locked with his and he removed his hands from her shoulders. She kept looking at him and for some reason, she couldn´t stop herself from grinning. Kira wasn´t really good at handling herself around boys, just as awkward as she was, whenever other people brought attention on her. Nevertheless she had had boyfriends before, it just took her a while to get comfortable around other people, especially guys.

Scott was different though, Scott made her feel safe and appreciated in a way no other guy, whether they were her boyfriend or not, ever really had. Suddenly without really thinking about what she was doing, she had met Scott halfway and pressed her lips against his.

His hands supported her, as she leant closer into him. His lips parted, and Kira´s tongue slipped into his mouth, and her hands found their way into Scott´s hair, her fingers running through it. His hair was surprisingly soft, and she loved the feeling of it between her fingers. It felt amazing, and Kira didn´t want it to stop any time soon. Her hands had moved from his hair, to where they were now fisting his shirt, trying to drag him even closer, even though that was not really possible, considering their current position.

Scott´s hands moved down to her hips from her shoulders, and she could feel his fingers gently drawing circles on the skin just under the hem of her shirt. Kira breathed heavily, and smiled against his lips. But suddenly she felt her knees buckle under her, and she stumbled backwards.

"Hey," Scott said, hands on her shoulders again. He was clearly worried something was going wrong again. "Are you sure you _are _okay?"

"No," Kira admitted with a shaky laugh. "I should probably get inside; I am just kind of tired." A nervous grin spread across her face, one that was mirrored by a soft smile on Scott´s face. The concern was still in his eyes though.

"I´ll help you," he said and offered her his hand when she started walking. Kira actually appreciated the help, because her legs were still kind of weak. Scott was a great support though, and they crossed the lawn at a pace that was not too fast or too slow, which was helping on her shaky legs. Once they reached the front step, Scott placed a quick kiss against her hair, before he headed back towards his bike. "I´ll see you tomorrow, you know, at school."

"Yeah," Kira said a smile growing on her face. "I´ll see you." She stood on the doorstep leaning against the door, watching Scott jump on his bike and drive away. Once he was out of sight, Kira let herself into the house, and shut the door behind her. It was really quiet that night, but then again her mother was away for a business trip. Of course, Kira did not know whether her mother was actually doing business. She could be Kitsune things too, Kira didn´t know. Especially since her mother had not gotten that much better with not hiding things from her. But at least that meant, the talk they needed to have, about her injuries could wait until tomorrow, because right now Kira was too tired to do much talking.

Kira was just about to head to her room to crash on her bed, and sleep quite a long time, as she passed the living room, and heard her father´s voice. "You could at least have invited Scott inside honey." And then she froze in her tracks, and could feel her entire face turning red. Luckily for her, her dad could not see that, because of the dark hallway. But knowing there was no way, she was avoiding this confrontation, Kira slowly turned towards the living room, trying to look the least guilty as possible.

"Hey Dad," she said quietly, still trying to hide her burning red cheeks. Her dad slowly lowered his newspaper, and sent her a big smile, which definitely meant he had at least seen something. Which was awkward, actually even very awkward. "Oh god," she muttered under her breath, and the smile on her dad´s face was definitely there to stay. "Didn´t think you were home."


	13. A Bit of Truth

Scott was not entirely sure how to handle this to be honest, he really did not want to turn his monitor on. But he had to, they needed all the help they could get, to find out what was out in the woods. The bestiary had been useful in the past, and the only way to get it was to talk to Allison. So that was what he had to do. He breathed heavily, and almost hoped she was not online. But as he turned on his computer and went on Skype it turned out she was, which meant there was no way around calling her. So that was what he did, and roughly thirty seconds later, Allison appeared on his screen.

"Hey Scott," she said, a small smile on her face. She looked good, even though she still had a cast on her arm. But of course she still had it. Allison was completely human. "Are you okay?" she asked, almost as if "something is wrong" was written all across his face. It might be, but at least this meant he didn´t have to figure out a way to ask her about the bestiary.

"I am okay," Scott said, leaning back in his office chair. Allison frowned, which meant she was not going to let him off the hook just yet. "How are you?"

"I am fine," Allison said, a reassuring smile on her face. "It is a bit difficult to settle into this, but I am okay too." She yawned apparently she was tired. It was not particular late or early in France was it? "Now, what´s wrong Scott?"

"Lydia wailed a few days ago," Scott began. "And me and Kira chased after a creature, we found when we got to that place." Allison did not comment, but just listened to him instead. "We got a description of it, and a drawing, so we figured we´d ask you and your dad if you could find anything in the bestiary."

"I should have known you couldn´t do without me," Allison said quietly without looking into Scott´s eyes. "Yeah, sure do you have it on your computer?"

"Yes, I can send it to you now," Scott replied. Allison was silent for a few seconds, as if she seemed to consider what to say next. Scott had a feeling she was figuring something out.

"Good. Oh and Scott? You said it happened a few days ago," the question hung in the air, and Scott didn´t even have to answer it. "You wasn´t sure you wanted to involve me right? You could have told me." Allison didn´t sound disappointed, it was actually closer to angry or annoyed with him.

"I know," Scott admitted, a little embarrassed by not having told her. "And before you say, you can handle yourself, I know you can. But I just wanted you to have a chance to leave, and not have to deal with anyone of this for a while. You know start over?"

"Scott," Allison inhaled sharply. "As much as I want to start over, and believe me, both me and dad do. You´re still my friends, I still want to help you if big blue cat things are running around killing people."

"You already opened the picture?" Scott asked, the dumb question slipping out before he thought it through. Allison laughed softly, and god had he missed hearing that sound. Her last few months in Beacon Hills hadn´t exactly been filled with sunshine and rainbows, which of course life in Beacon Hills never really was. But the last months with the whole Nogitsune thing had been particularly bad.

"I can multitask Scott, and don´t change the subject," Allison retorted, and this time it was his turn to laugh a little. Then they sat in quiet for a minute or so. He did not want to admit it, but it was nice to see her face again, even if her face was on a webcam, and not really there. Scott knew that, but it was still nice to see her, knowing for sure that she still was there, and still was okay. Of course, he knew Lydia had talked to her, but it was different actually seeing her for himself. As much as he knew his former girlfriend could take care of herself, it was still nice knowing that she _was _okay. "Scott," she began. "I want you to promise me something."

"What do you want me to promise you?" he asked quietly, even though he had a pretty good idea about what she wanted to make him promise. He didn´t like having to promise her that, because he wanted her to be safe. But he knew if she got any way of knowing what went on, she was going to help them, even if he tried to keep her safe. So maybe he should just promise her.

"I want you to promise," she said slowly, as if trying to come up with the best possible way to say it. "That you tell. If this thing with the creatures get worse, I want you to tell me. Because I want to help, and dad does too, if I do a good enough job at convincing him." She smiles a little, and does not meet Scott´s eyes at those last words, but then she looks up again, and looks straight into his eyes. "Please."

"We will," Scott said quietly. "If any supernatural thing gets too bad, I´ll tell you."

"Then we have a deal," Allison said, with one of those gorgeous smiles, that he still likes. They talk a little more after that, but not really about anything that important, and a few minutes later, they end the conversation, and Scott is left in his empty dark bedroom. He closes his monitor, and walks over and drops down on his bed. It had had really been a long night.

Malia set a quick pace down the road from Stiles´ house. She liked running at night, and she could easily take a detour, as there was still almost an hour until the curfew her dad had given her. It was a surprisingly late curfew, considering that she had been back from being a coyote for barely two months. But her dad wanted to stay on her good side, so this was how it worked for them. And Malia had to admit, that she liked her dad, he was an angry man, more than just slightly bitter, but he was still her family.

Humanity had turned out to be more complicated than Malia had expected it to, she had expected it to just be terrible, and make her want to turn back into a coyote. She had figured out that she actually liked the company of people her age, especially people like Stiles, Scott, Kira and Lydia, who understood what her problem was. The problem in her case being, that about two months ago she was a coyote.

Scott and Kira had both turned out to be good friends, and so had Lydia, the three of them listened to her and helped her, so Malia did think she had the right to consider them her friends. It was Stiles that was the confusing one of them. It had felt like the right thing to kiss him in Eichen House, but now Malia was not so sure after she actually knew him. Back then she had still been sure, she would turn back into a coyote relatively quickly, and who could blame her if she wanted to kiss a relatively attractive boy before then?

Now, Malia realized that to Stiles she was going to be second best, because in reality Stiles liked Lydia more. It was obvious when she was around the two of them, but Malia wasn´t really jealous or anything like that. At least she didn´t think so. That was the complicated bit. She was not exactly sure how much she liked Stiles, because of the whole Eichen House being kind of a spur of the moment thing. So she had decided not to worry about boys, at least until she had settled better into being a human being. Because coyotes didn´t really have to worry about boys, so she had zero experience in it.

Out of nowhere, Malia ran into someone, but she relatively quickly regained her footing, and shot a glare at the guy she had run into. He returned that glare, and looked just as annoyed to come across her, as she was to have come across him. "You should watch where you´re going," he said. He sounded calm enough, so maybe he was not as angry with her, as he looked. But Malia still had her claws ready, just in case he did decide to get angry.

"What about you?" she asked and crossed her arms. He rolled his eyes.

"So you just walked into me, even though you watched where you were going?" he asked. Malia thought there was something familiar about him; his scent seemed like one she had smelled before. She was tempted to retort, that he could have looked where he was going to, but stopped herself. It was not necessarily a good idea to give him the entire blame, because if she did, she would definitely end up in some sort of fight, and unlike what some of her friends thought, Malia was not always looking for a fight.

"Some of it might have been my fault," she reluctantly admitted. Angry boy, or now slightly less angry boy, grinned at her, clearly satisfied he had gotten her to admit she was even a slight bit wrong. Which was annoying, but she was still not looking for too much fighting.

"Now was that so hard?" he asked, the angry tone was definitely gone from his voice now. That made him sound a lot nicer.

"No," Malia replied, but she made sure to make a face at him. She didn´t even know why it was annoying her as much as it was. Just annoying face maybe?

"I haven´t seen you around before," he said after none of them had moved for a minute, which was more than just slightly awkward. If he hadn´t, Malia would have probably taken off around then.

"I am homeschooled," Malia explained, her arms still crossed. She didn´t explain to him, that she spent the majority of her time at the library, at home or at one of her friends´ house and Derek´s apartment. Although she didn´t like Derek´s place that much. Why was she even thinking about that?

"Okay then, I have things to do so-" he smiled to her again, and Malia found herself returned the smile, but reluctantly. He still seemed familiar, but it was like her brain still couldn´t connect the dots, to figure out where she knew him from, or why he seemed so familiar. When he had walked a little away from her, he spun around to face her again. "And by the way, my name is Liam." And that was the exact moment, Malia knew who he was. _Crap._

* * *

Author´s note: Once in a while I just have a chapter, that flows easily and works out relatively easy. This one is one of those chapters, in large part because of the Malia scene in the end. I hope you enjoyed this as usual, and if you did, I would love if you left a review.


	14. Talking

A general rule Danny had, was to stay out of supernatural crap. Because it seemed like this town was completely filled with it. The rule was one Jackson had practically forced upon him, once he had told him about the werewolves. Danny had to admit, he agreed. It´s smarter that way, and you won´t end up as a fucking lizard, was along the lines of what Jackson had said to him. Obviously Danny could have figured that out for himself, but he still appreciated Jackson´s concern. It was rarely his best friend bothered being concerned about anyone.

But nevertheless he always seemed to end up on the edge of it, or, in this case, in hearing range of it. Because Danny was pretty sure there was something up with one of the two freshman kids that walked ahead of him, as they headed back from Cross Country practice. Danny knew the guy a little bit, he was one of their best players, and had been a total surprise at try outs, but beyond that he didn´t know much about him.

"Dude, your ankle was broken yesterday. You told me," his friend argued, again not really someone that Danny knew. "How the hell could you run?" Danny had heard about things healing fast before, but those stories involved McCall, Lahey and Jackson. All three of them had something supernatural going on, which probably meant Danny should avoid the freshman kid.

"Just hurt it," the first one countered his friend. "It wasn´t exactly broken Mason."

"You were still limping this morning," Mason argued.

"No, I wasn´t," Mason´s friend answered. "I was fine." It was a little weird, maybe he hadn´t hurt his leg as bad, as his friend insisted, but coincidences like that rarely happened in Beacon Hills.

"Whatever you say Liam," Mason replied, and the argument between the two appeared to be over, but when Danny glanced over his shoulder, he saw something else that was a bit interesting. McCall and Stilinski were walking further down the line of people, who were making their way back to the school, and McCall seemed to be focused on something, there was ahead of him. In fact, Danny was pretty sure, he was trying to hear the conversation between Mason and Liam. Not that Danny knew how Scott thought he could hear their conversation from that distance, but maybe that was part of the freaky werewolf powers. After all neither Jackson nor Ethan had given him a full rundown over what werewolves could actually do. Ethan had not even told him he was a werewolf, although Danny had figured it out pretty fast.

Once Coach was done pep talking them for the next game, and the majority of the team had headed home, Danny decided to wait outside, and funnily enough Scott did the same. He was just checking his phone, probably texting his girlfriend or Stilinski. Even though Danny was almost certain, Stiles was still inside. But that made this as good a time as ever, to tell him what he had heard. Of course, he could just tell Lydia next time he saw her, but he decided that this was easier and more convenient. "You want to know what they said right?" Danny asked, and saw the surprised look on Scott´s face. "Or did you hear it already?" Danny took a few steps towards him, and McCall still looked confused.

"What do you mean?" Scott asked, trying to mask his confusion. Danny might have smirked, even though he felt kind of bad about it. This made it obvious that Lydia had decided to keep his revelation secret. Maybe she had still thought, that he didn´t want to be involved. Which she was naturally right about.

"So Lydia haven´t told you?" Danny asked. "Jackson told me before he left." Before Scott could ask any questions, he continued: "You and Isaac Lahey are werewolves; Vernon Boyd and that other girl Erica were too, Jackson was a lizard thing. It looked like you were trying to hear what Mason and Liam, those two freshmen walking in front of me, were saying."

"So you´ve known for almost 6 months?" Scott asked, his hands fiddling with his training shirt. Danny didn´t think he was aware of it. "You never told us?"

"Well, I wanted to stay out of it," Danny explained, that was definitely true. He would never have dated Ethan if he hadn´t liked him a lot, and he had. "That makes living in this town a little easier." Scott smiled a weak smile, and looked down on the ground. Danny had a feeling, that Scott would like to have the same option as him, at least some of the time. "So? Do you want to know what they said or not?"

"No, that´s okay. I could hear it just fine," Scott replied.

"So you have super-hearing too?" Danny asked, that confirmed his suspicion from earlier. "Not that I am that surprised." Super human strength and running faster could come with super-hearing too. He just hoped McCall wasn´t going to fly around as a superhero anytime soon, because that would be too weird even for Beacon Hills.

"Yeah, we kind of do," Scott said, and awkward grin on his face. McCall looked a little uncomfortable with doing a bit of a werewolf 101, even more so than Lydia had looked, when she and Danny had talked about it in the classroom. They stood in silence for a few seconds, Scott clearly grateful that he didn´t have to explain more of it, before Danny motioned to leave too. "So, if you want to stay away from this whole supernatural thing. You should probably stay away from them," Scott decided to add. Good enough warning, he should give McCall more credit than he did.

"That makes sense," Danny said. Then he hoisted up in his training bag, and headed down towards his car. Behind him, he heard Stilinski´s loud, almost yelling voice, talking with Scott. Probably about the conversation Scott and Danny had just had, but Danny didn´t listen to the two of them. He had given a little bit of help, and to be honest that was good enough for Danny. Now back to rule one.

* * *

Kira had spent most of her afternoon sleeping, just like she almost had in her Physics class. Lydia had given her a pitiful look in class, and afterwards offered her the notes Lydia had taken. Kira was pretty sure, that Lydia didn´t need notes for Physics, but she still took them. When Kira had asked why, Lydia had said it was just a habit from when she was younger. Kira found it a little hard to believe, that anyone could ever make a habit out of taking notes, but if anyone would it was Lydia.

Once Kira had finally gotten home, she had headed straight to her bed, to take a nap. Deaton´s magic stuff had done miracles for her since last night, but she was still not entirely okay. Her dad hadn´t said anything about her yawning and general tiredness in the car. He hadn´t said anything about whether or not he had seen her kiss Scott the previous night. Kira wasn´t sure, if she should be grateful or worried. Once her mom had called for dinner.

Her mom gave her a curious look, when she saw Kira´s bed hair and huge hoodie. She probably looked really tired too. "Is something wrong Kira?" her mother asked.

"I am tired," Kira admitted and sat down on her chair. Her dad had made lasagna for them, and Kira started eating. "And something else is wrong too. You remember how I said, Lydia wailed for someone the other night?" Both of her parents nodded. "Well, something kind of went wrong. One of those creature things attacked me, but I thought the wounds would just go away."

"But they didn´t?" her mother guessed. Kira nodded, and glanced at her father. He was sitting in silence, just listening to their conversation. Maybe he wanted to let the two Kitsunes of the family talk about this? And boy did that sound weird.

"No, they didn´t. We had to get help from Deaton yesterday, because I was feeling really terrible," Kira continued, fiddling with a string on her hoodie. "But I´m better now," she quickly added, before her parents could get too worried. "I was just wondering, if you knew what it could be?"

"And Scott wasn´t hurt by it?" her mother asked. Apparently she could remember that Kira had said, her and Scott had chased after the creatures. Because Kira had mentioned to her parents what had happened in the woods, but since she hadn´t known that much about it, she hadn´t told them that much more.

"He was, but he healed like he normally would. It´s just that I didn´t," Kira explained biting her lip. She was not sure if her parents would be angry with her or not, there was a chance they would be. After all she hadn´t told either of them, that her injuries on her legs and arms hadn´t gone away. Her mother looked on her for a minute or so, contemplating what Kira had just told them. She was probably also trying to figure out, what they could have met in the forest. Kira knew, Scott had called Allison about it last night, but it would probably still be helpful if her mother tried to figure it out too.

"Kira can I talk to you after dinner?" her mother asked. Kira probably looked like a question mark then, it was rare her mother talked to her alone. Her dad had even been around, when her mom had explained the whole Kitsune thing. They finished the rest of dinner, while they talked about more normal stuff. But there was tension in the air, because Kira knew they would have to talk about something serious, once dinner was over. Her dad and mom discussed her mother´s trip, and asked Kira how school had been. Finally they seemed to reach the end of dinner, and Kira followed her mother to her office.

Kira had never been allowed in her mother´s office when she was a kid, but she had been there a couple of times since she had found out about being a Kitsune. It was a simple office, and when she was a kid, Kira had always wondered why her mother had an office. She had never been told why. Her mom took a seat near the large window, and Kira took the chair opposite her. "So, do you know anything?" Kira asked, when her mother didn´t say something. It was times like this when Kira remembered her mother´s age; it was never not going to be freaky to her.

"There are a few species, which can inflict damage, a Kitsune can´t heal by themselves," her mother began. "Of course we can be killed if we´re hurt badly enough, but these kinds of creatures can hurt us with very little."

"So you´re saying I can´t help Scott and the others?" Kira asked. She hoped that was not what her mother was saying; Kira hated feeling like she was useless.

"You should be careful," her mother said. "There are lots of different kinds of these creatures, around 50 different kinds at least," she paused and looked out of the window. "I don´t know much about them, because I´ve managed to stay away from them for most of my life. But according to what I know, they´re werewolves gone wrong."

"What do you mean?" Kira asked. Her hands were back to fiddling with her sweatshirt. Her mother didn´t answer right away, which meant she wanted Kira to guess. That was something her mom liked to do, to make Kira think. "An Alpha tried to turn them, but something went wrong." Kira suggested, when she had thought it over once. That would make a lot of sense. Her mother sent her a small approving smile, which told Kira she had got it right. "Do you know anything else?"

"No, unfortunately I don´t," her mother said with a small sigh. "But I do have a lasting antidote for your wounds, which we should use." Her mom got up from her chair, and went to search her shelves on the right side of the office. Kira let out a sigh of relief, they finally had some clue on what those creatures, and even if they still had a lot of research to do, that was better than nothing. That was always a start.

* * *

Author´s note: Feeling all inspired lately, which definitely contributed to making this chapter one of the longest yet. I do as always love hearing your thoughts, so feel free to leave them for me.


	15. Familiar Faces

He can smell them from a distance this time, farther away than he has been able to smell anything of late. That might be a sign that the magic he is using the stump for is actually working, even though he still needs his final pieces, without them he will never get what he wants. But curious, he follows them to their meeting place. They´re both running and look like giant cats, he looks more human than they do. That is a little surprising to him, if he is honest to himself. He always thought he was a monster, and he was always told that too. Not that he cares what they told him.

The blonde woman changed from her cat like form back to human, and so did the smaller one who had been accompanying her. He had known the woman would be here, but he was a little surprised by the boy. The teenager said something, but didn´t look at her. "Did I do what you wanted last night?" He sounded a bit insecure, which only confirmed she had managed to stay in charge.

"Yeah, you really did Liam. We can´t get rid of Derek yet, as much as I just want to burn his apartment building down," the woman replied. A smirk crept onto her face; he could still see it despite the darkness. "We need to do a bit more work before then."

"Good. But about the other thing?" Liam replied. If he had sounded quiet or worried before, he was practically silent and definitely terrified now. He wondered why the boy would be terrified, surely, he had gone into this willingly, whatever "this" was. Otherwise he would be running away from right now. Or he should be anyway.

"About the person you killed?" she asked. Liam´s face fell, and she had clearly stung her knife in a wound, in something he was trying to hide. "Things like that happen."

"What do you mean?" Liam asked, his voice was harder now, and he sounded more sure of himself. He had to admit he admired the boy´s courage, not everyone would question a leader. But maybe that was just because he was angry. That was a definite possibility. Because she was shrugged it off, like what he had done meant nothing, or at the very least was not her focus.

"It doesn´t really matter," the woman replied. "You killed a guy, because you couldn´t control yourself. Just try to avoid doing it again." The boy called Liam looked practically horrified by that. It was not all people who liked killing, of course he hadn´t originally done that himself either. However reality had made him realize that killing was necessary, Liam would realize that too.

"It doesn´t matter?" Liam asked, clearly upset about her answer. He should get better at keeping his emotions in check. "What if he had any family? What if I get caught?"

"You won´t," the woman replied, completely ignoring his other questions. "They won´t connect you to a murder committed by some kind of wild animal. And if you stick with me, I´ll make sure the werewolves won´t have a clue either." She was leaving the boy no choice, if he tried to leave because he disagreed with her, his little accident would be exposed. Smart thinking. Liam seemed to realize this too, but be unsure of what to say. He clearly wasn´t entirely satisfied with her answer.

"I´ve never really liked rules," she admitted. "They strain you too much, especially when you have the power to do what you want. And that´s exactly what we got." That was not entirely true, not even close, but if she liked to think that, then he would let her. "Do you understand that?" she asked, her voice sweet but amused. It sounded like the world was a joke to her, which he figured she had reason to believe. After all it almost seemed like a joke how she had ended up here.

"Yeah," Liam replied. "I do."

"Then you should go home," she told him. Liam gave her a long look, he still looked unsure if he should listen to her, which probably was the smartest thing the boy had done all night. But slightly reluctantly he ran in the direction of the town, leaving the woman still standing in the clearing. She didn´t move an inch, but looked to tense up. Maybe she did know he was here.

"I know you´re here," she said, her voice shaking a little. He had to admit that was a pretty sweet sound. "You can come out of hiding," she steadied herself and tried to sound harsher and tougher. It was a little pathetic in his opinion, but maybe also a little reasonable. If she considered the fact that their previous encounters had been a little violent.

He stepped out of his hiding spot, and her face didn´t look the least bit surprised. That told him, she had known exactly who he was, and that he was here. And why wouldn´t she know? After all, the two did have a bit of a history.

* * *

Derek´s head still felt like it was enveloped in a mist of tiredness and amnesia, when small sparks of lights seemed to come through it. He opened his eyes to a dimly lit apartment, someone had moved him to the sofa, because he didn´t remember collapsing there. Derek rubbed his eyes, and pushed himself into a sitting position.

He looked around the big room, it was night outside, but he wasn´t sure, if he had only slept an hour or so, or 24 hours. The apartment looked as abandoned as it had until he collapsed last night, but that was when he saw her sitting on the staircase, and he practically had a heart attack.

"Cora?" his voice came out as a croak, because sitting right there on the staircase was his sister. The sister, he hadn´t seen since before he and Peter had gotten captured in Mexico. The sister he had feared he wouldn´t get to see again. She looked a lot like herself, but her hair was shorter, and she was a little thinner and tanner. He didn´t get the chance to notice more though, because Cora´s head popped up from where it was resting and she stared straight at him. She smiled wider, than he had seen her smile since before the fire.

Then before he could really process what was going on, Cora had gotten up, and quickly crossed the room to the sofa, and was hugging him tightly against her chest. Derek was a little taken back at first, but then returned her hug. He hadn´t seen her lose control of herself like this, since maybe before the fire. Yes, he had seen her get angry last year on more than one occasion, but this was different. He felt like she had let down her walls to let him inside. They sat in silence for a few moments, and Derek was surprised by how much he liked this hug.

He was not really a hugging person, and he never really had been. But this was Cora, she was one of the two people left in the world he could call family. And he realized, that despite all he had said to Peter, he had been worried, that the next time he would see her, it would be in a body bag.

"I wasn´t sure you´d wake up," Cora said, as she loosened her grip on him and moved slightly away again. She was avoiding his eyes, almost appearing a little embarrassed by her burst of emotion. That almost made Derek laugh, but he figured she would probably punch him if he did. "I am happy to see you," she added a genuinely happy tone in her voice.

"I am happy to see you too," he assured her. "I was worried about you. We couldn´t figure out what happened to you."

"That´s a long story," Cora began, this time she looked him into the eyes, maybe to get him to drop it.

"I doubt I´ll die of boredom," Derek retorted. Cora punched him in the arm, but it was only a halfhearted punch.

"You´re right about that," Cora admitted under her breath. They both settled more comfortably on the sofa, as Cora started talking. "Once the car crashed I took off," she began. "I figured if you could, you would follow me." Derek nodded; he had tried to once he got out from the Calaveras´ hideout. That was why he had ended up, in his weird coma thing in the first place. At least he figured it was it was more than a little bit blurry in his head.

"I stuck around the highway for a few days," Cora continued. "I felt guilty about leaving you, but I couldn´t catch your scent after that night. I tried quite a few times before I decided to go."

"And what happened then?" Derek asked.

"I tracked down a pack," Cora explained. "They let me stay in exchange for some help, which I gladly gave them. It was nice and kind of safe. That was until we ran into a band of hunters, and I kind of got a problem." Derek frowned, he had no idea what that problem could be.

"What do you mean?" Derek asked. That was a needless question, because Cora would probably explain it. Nevertheless Derek still felt like had to ask it, because he wanted to know it.

"Something weird happened with my wolf, I couldn´t control it. I´ve learned control with my old pack, but it seemed like I couldn´t do anything to keep my wolf under control," Cora explained her tone a little more desperate. She sounded somewhat afraid, or at least freaked out. That was again unusual for his sister, who had been either stoic or angry last time she had been here. "They couldn´t figure out what was going on with me, and it kept happening, so I left them. I decided it was better that way, and I figured if anyone knew, there would be a relatively good chance they were in Beacon Hills." Derek nodded, that argument made a lot of sense.

Suddenly Derek felt like something cold was shut into his chest, and filled his lungs. He recognized the feeling, when he practically felt like yelled at him. Derek looked at Cora, and he saw the dread in her eyes. It was Lydia´s banshee wail.

* * *

Author´s note: had a little writers´ block which was why this took a little longer. I´ve really loved the response I´ve gotten for the last few chapters, also from the guest reviewers, who I unfortunately can´t shower in love and gratitude. From now on I am going to leave you the next chapter title, so you can´t get a hint about the things to come. Chapter 16: Welcome back


	16. Welcome Back

Lydia opened the car door and stepped out into the cool frisk air of the forest. She was not really too happy to be back there again. Especially since, it was once again to uncover another body. Lydia sighed heavily and tugged the coat closer around herself; there was no point in postponing it. She took a deep breath and tried to focus. This was different from last time, where she had gone in psycho trance. But then again the whole banshee experience always seemed to vary and be different. Lydia hated that; she would much rather that there was some kind of pattern. She was used to working with patterns, and she was excellent at that. But the only pattern seemed to be that there was always screaming and dead bodies involved, everything else seemed to be up in the air.

Another engine broke the silence of the preserve, and two front lights belonging to Stiles´ Jeep lighted up the dim dark forest. Lydia didn´t move, until Stiles had gotten out of his car. They seemed to be the first two at the place. But of course she had called him first, that was the general rule of supernatural crap in Lydia´s world. Call Stiles first, and then Stiles calls Scott. She expected that Stiles had executed his part of the rule, just as he usually did.

"Scott and the others should be here in a few minutes," Stiles told her, thus confirming her expectation. Lydia wondered for a moment when she had learned to read the crazy, sarcastic boy that well. But it was probably just from overexposure. "Are you okay?"

"Apart from being about to find yet another body?" Lydia asked sending him a pointed look. "Yeah, apart from that I´m peachy."

"Yeah, sorry I asked," Stiles replied. He sounded genuinely sorry, as if he only realized it was a dumb question after he had asked it. "You just seem different from last time." He was obviously right, she had not gone into a weird trance. Not yet anyway.

"This is always different," Lydia said quietly. Stiles didn´t ask her more about it, and she kind of wished he did. For some odd reason, she wouldn´t have minded if he pried more into the whole banshee thing. That was unusual for her, because Lydia liked hiding things and keeping personal things private. Her mother, Allison and Jackson was the only people who she had really let get under her skin. But Stiles was not going to get added to that list, obviously not.

Before Lydia could think about all of this in more detail, Scott´s bike and the Hales´ Camaro rolled into the clearing where she and Stiles had parked their car. Scott, with Kira in tow, was on the bike, but Lydia was honestly more than a little surprised to see who got out of the car with Derek. Because beside Derek stood a skinny, dark haired teenage girl with a scowl on her face, who despite the tan and shorter hair, still definitely could only be Cora Hale. Lydia definitely felt like she had missed something, because when the hell had Cora gotten back into town?

She imagined that the expressions on Stiles and Scott´s face were pretty close to her own, at a loss for words. Kira just looked confused, and her eyes darted between her three friends, but that was a given considering she had never met Cora Hale.

"Cora," Scott said. Lydia wasn´t sure, if it was a question, or just a short explanation to Kira. It could be both too.

"Okay, when did you come back here?" Stiles asked, clearly completely shocked by Cora´s sudden appearance. Lydia was a bit too, but she figured it was better to just let Cora explain it. It would be more effective, and she was still itching to find a dead body. Even though she hated to admit the last one. "What are you doing here? What have you been doing for the last four months?"

"Aren´t we here because she wailed?" Cora asked, deciding to ignore Stiles´ questions. Something that in turn clearly annoyed Stiles. But at the same time Lydia recognized that Cora probably only said it, because she wanted to dodge the questions. Not surprising, considering that she was a Hale.

"We are," Scott agreed. "Let's take care of that first." Everyone nodded in agreement, and it seemed like Cora´s sudden appearance was temporarily forgotten. Lydia was not complaining, it was getting harder to focus on the conversation now, because she was not doing what she was supposed to. She saw the others all looked to her, and Lydia took a long deep breath, and closed her for a second. When she opened them again. She knew where the body was.

Lydia walked without really thinking, it felt like she was trapped in her own little world. She didn´t know how to get out of it, but she expected it would happen once she found the body. The body wasn´t that far away from them now, and Lydia couldn´t ignore the feeling that she needed to go there. Her feet were moving faster and faster, as she headed deeper into the forest. She was aware that the werewolves were following her, but otherwise paid them no attention.

Suddenly she stopped, and she felt Stiles´ hand on her shoulder. Lydia looked at the ground before her, and she now saw the body. It was a woman this time, but Lydia didn´t look at much else, because of how ravaged she looked. She looked to have been killed by the same thing, as the man the other day had. But Lydia hadn´t had a close look at the other body, so she could be wrong.

"Looks like the same kind of wounds," Scott said and Stiles nodded. Then it was probably the same thing, as what they had seen in the woods the other day.

"Yes," Kira agreed, clearly trying not to look too much at the body. "Just a woman instead." Stiles hit his mouth behind his hand, and Lydia had a feeling he was smiling, so Lydia reached out and punched him lightly. He shot her an annoyed look, which Lydia returned. She should be used to him saying or doing things like that by now, but usually Scott worked as his conscious.

"You did have an idea about what it was right?" Cora asked them. Before any of the others could answer, Kira did.

"We do. I talked to my mother earlier, because I wanted to figure out what could have stopped me from healing. She told me what she knew," Kira explained.

"You did?" Scott said with a smile on his face. It was Scott´s proud smile, and he seemed impressed that she had figured it out. It was more than the rest of them had managed to do. She might have smiled too, if it was not for the dead woman in front of them, and her increasing nausea.

"Yeah," Kira replied, probably blushing a little bit. "Was I not supposed to, you know, do that?" Scott just smiled again as an answer, and that was clearly enough. Lydia rubbed her hands against each other and swallowed hard.

"Lydia should get back to her car," Derek suddenly said. When none of them commented, he elaborated: "She is swaying and looks sick." Both Scott and Stiles offered her a supportive arm, but Lydia declined them.

"We didn´t walk that far," she argued. "I can go back to the car by myself."

"Lydia," Cora said. "We walked almost half a mile."

* * *

Stiles swung open the door to the police station the following morning. One of the deputies, who was sitting by the desk nearest the door, greeted him with a suspicious look.

"Good morning Lauren," Stiles said, trying to give her his biggest and most innocent smile. Something he was pretty sure he was failing at.

"Aren´t teenagers usually at school at eleven am?" Lauren asked, trying not to laugh at his efforts to appear innocent. She had known Stiles for a long time, and knew perfectly well how he occasionally was. She´d even declared once, just after she had started, that he was a weird kid, but since she had seemed oddly okay with whatever went down.

"Second period is cancelled, so I thought I´d go see my dear pops," Stiles replied. A smile tugged on Lauren´s lips, but she finally let him walk to go see his dad. Stiles walked down the familiar hallways to his dad´s office. He had been here practically every day through his childhood, especially after his mother´s death. Stiles knew most of the deputies and other employees, at least those who had been here for a longer time. He didn´t know people like Parrish that well, but he knew that part of the police that had managed to survive all the supernatural crap very well.

His dad was sitting in his office looking something up on his computer. Stiles´ second period wasn´t actually cancelled, but he had figured he could miss out on algebra this once, to go find out if the police had figured anything out about the newest dead body in town. Stiles knocked on the door, and his dad looked up and rolled his eyes. He looked like he had expected him to show up at some point today, but Stiles took it as a sign that he could go inside his office.

"So kiddo," he looked up from the computer again, and pressed a few keys to close what he was doing down. "What do you want to know?"

"Preferably what I get for Christmas, and whether I´ll actually graduate from high school. But right now I just want to know what you know about the new body," Stiles retorted. His dad smiled slightly, before getting up from his chair.

"We don´t know that much yet," he replied with a heavy sigh. He looked like, he was _very _tired of all of those. Stiles couldn´t really blame him. "Same kind of damage as the last one."

"So same killer?" Stiles suggested.

"Could be. You said there was two of those things right?" Stiles nodded, of course he hadn´t seen both of them, he had barely even seen just one. He had been too busy taken care of Lydia that night.

"Did you find anything on the body?" Stiles asked. "More clues or anything?"

"It´s a woman in her thirties," his father said. "I am not going to tell you her name, but she had a valet and ID on her. He also had something else in his pocket though." His father picked up a small plastic bag from his desk. Inside it was something silvery, and Stiles squinted his eyes. Because that was definitely and most certainly Kate Argent´s necklace.

* * *

Author´s note: Chapter 17: Never Keep Secrets


	17. Never Keep Secrets

"And you´re sure, it´s Kate´s?" Scott asked, as he walked beside his best friend down the school hallway. Not the best place to have a conversation about supernatural things, but Scott had to work with what he had.

"Definitely Argent thing," Stiles said, sounding completely convinced. Scott only had his word, because despite Stiles´ protests, the sheriff hadn´t allowed him to take the necklace from the station, since it was evidence. Scott got why, but Stiles had clearly been annoyed by it. "She had a necklace right?"

"Yeah," Scott replied. "Kate gave it to Allison, but Allison said she didn´t want anything more to do with it after the whole finding out about the fire thing." Scott hadn´t really asked much about it back then, because Allison seemed to not want to talk about it, but now he wondered if he should have. "Should we tell her?" Scott asked.

"That her aunt´s jewelry showed up on a dead body?" Stiles asked him, Scott rolled his eyes at him and sighed heavily.

"Just what it might mean," Scott said, already having a certain idea about what it could be. But all of them were horrible ideas, that Scott didn´t like thinking about. "If she knows anything about the necklace, if it has any sort of supernatural power." It was Kate´s necklace after all, and a lot of stranger things had happened.

"We could ask someone else, so we don´t have to get her involved, you know? We could ask Gerard, you´ve done it before," Stiles suggested. Scott was about to argue that, that was the very definition of a terrible idea. It had been the first time, and it would be again. Besides, they could not even ask Gerard. Because Mr. Argent had told him two months ago, that Gerard had died in his elderly home.

"Gerard is dead," Scott replied. "And why do you wanna keep this from Allison anyway?"

"Well Scott, you said you wanted to keep her on the side, because it got so close with the-" Stiles didn´t finish the sentence and avoided Scott´s look. "And I just didn´t wanna see what might happen to you, or to Lydia, or anyone if it got closer." Scott put a hand onto his shoulder, and looked into Stiles´ eyes.

"None of that was you," Scott said sincerely. He had never been angry at Stiles for any of it, and as far as he knew, none of their other friends was either. Stiles had been controlled by the Nogitsune, and he couldn´t do anything about it.

"Well, remembering most of it, is not exactly helping on the whole innocent thing," Stiles mumbled. Scott wasn´t sure what to say next, because this was not exactly the first time they´d had this conversation, and he knew it would take more than that to convince his best friend. But suddenly a voice cut through the noise of the students, and Scott felt a small smile tugging on his lips.

"Hey!" Scott looked over his shoulder to see Kira having almost caught up with them. "Can I tag along to class?"

"Sure," Scott said, returning her wide smile. Both he and Stiles had stopped in their tracks, and Kira took a few long steps to walk in between them. Scott took her hand in his, and Kira grinned widely at him. She used her other hand to wipe away strands from her messy bun, which had fallen into her eyes.

"You´re even cuter than yesterday," Stiles said annoyed and clearly trying to figure something out, the question was just what. And of course whether they would regret him figuring it out afterwards. But Scott knew from experience that there was no stopping Stiles, when he had started digging in something. After all it was Stiles who had kept insisting that Scott was a werewolf, right after he had been bitten. "Did one of you say I love you or something?" Kira´s head jerked up and gave him a weird, confused look, Scott just stuck to a small sigh.

"No," Scott said calmly. "Just happy to see her," he sent Kira a reassuring smile. He was definitely not planning on telling Stiles, that he had made out with his girlfriend in her front yard. Especially because he knew Kira would probably want to kill him.

"Not convinced," Stiles said. "I´ll get to the bottom of that, both that and the mystery as to why you and I still haven´t watched Empire Strikes Back."

"Dude, I watched the first one," Scott argued. Kira laughed lightly.

"One Star Wars movie is not enough Scotty," Stiles retorted. "Besides, Empire is the best one."

"We´ll watch that after we get the killer in the woods," Scott promised, and Stiles gave him a thumb up.

"Holding you to that," Stiles said. Scott wrapped his arm around Kira´s shoulder, with his best friend on the other side of him, as they headed off to Math. And for a moment, despite the Kate and the killer talk, Scott felt normal, like just another 17 years old who had a best friend and a girlfriend. Scott cherished that feeling for as long as he could.

* * *

Malia was practically running down the hallway, which she had already been shouted at for once. She was late and she knew it. That was her dad´s fault, he had talked her into driving her to the library, where she had promised to meet Stiles and Lydia, but unfortunately, she and her dad had had a little miscommunication when it came to time.

"Woah," someone said, as Malia barely managed to dodge him. "What are you running away from?" She recognized the voice, and stopped in her tracks. Of course she had to run into Liam, but considering last night maybe she should hear him out. After all someone had died in the woods, and Liam was still a candidate for evil villain of the month.

"Just have someone I need to get to," Malia replied, trying to sound the least hostile as possible. But it was a little difficult when she was actually worried about him. _And why am I worried about him? Plus, how do I even ask about last night?_ She decided to just go with it, and do the damage control afterwards. "What were you doing last night?"

"What do you mean?" Liam asked frowning.

"You were out pretty late for a jogger," Malia retorted matter of factly.

"You were too, expect you didn´t really look to be jogging either," Liam replied. He was being cryptic, but at least one thing was clear, he hadn´t been jogging last night. She wondered what he might have done instead.

"Why not?"

"Nicer clothes," he said clearly without thinking. Then he started backtracking: "I mean, just you weren´t wearing sweats or anything." Malia decided to ignore that, even though she was pretty sure it was a compliment.

"What were you doing last night then?" Malia asked. "Since you said either."

"Heading home from Mason´s house," he replied. "We were playing video games." Seemed innocent enough, but he could still be lying. He was most likely lying, she told herself.

"Of course. I have to go though," Malia added, and she stopped a smile. _He is still probably evil. Don´t talk to evil people_. She started walking again, her feet moving quickly across the vinyl floors.

"What´s your name?" Liam asked her. "Since I keep running into you." Malia bit her lip, and was definitely considering not telling him for a moment, but then she inhaled sharply and turned around. But her earlier thought that this might be useful hit her again.

"Malia."

"Pretty name," Liam said, with something Malia couldn´t quite make out whether it was a smirk or a smile. But she was definitely out of here right now, and a small voice in the back of her head told her it was not just because she was late. Malia decided to ignore that.

* * *

Mark Parker didn´t know why he had agreed to this. It might have something to do with the fact that the woman had offered him 50 bucks, or the fact that she was kind of hot. Or well hot for a woman that was probably ten years older than him. She was sitting on his backseat staring blankly into the air. Her long dark brown hair with grey streaks was in a messy bun, and she had something that looked like a small suitcase on the seat beside her. She was wearing dark clothes, and she looked to be slender and strong. Her eyes seemed locked on the horizon, and he considered for a moment that she was carsick. But then again she really didn´t seem like it.

"You´re not a tourist?" he asked a little awkwardly. Mark was not a fan of silence, and he always tried to start conversations, even though it sometimes or most of the times went unsuccessfully. Like it probably would in this case, because the lady didn´t seem that talkative.

"No," she said curtly, and that confirmed his assumption. "I lived here when I was younger." Mark didn´t ask her any more questions, and the woman didn´t seem keen on small talk. She had told him to head to one of the motels in town, where she had apparently booked a room.

"You don´t have any family here then?" he asked, after a few minutes of silence, as they were rolled past the town line. Her head popped up and she sent him a confused look. "The motel, you said you booked a room."

"I do have family here," she said. "Paying them an unexpected visit." Well that was not at all cryptic, Mark sighed heavily and just focused on the road. Then she was quiet through the rest of the trip, he asked her a few more questions, but she never gave him an answer to any of them. That was a little rude, but the woman just in general didn´t seem to have any interest in him. That was a bit of a letdown too, if he was honest.

Finally, he parked outside the motel, and the woman picked up her suitcase, and paid him the 50 bucks she owed him. Mark´s eyes flickered, and he saw a name engraved on a small metal sign on the suitcase. _Dana Maria Tate. _

"Weird lady," he muttered to himself, as he drove out of the parking lot. Despite the fact that she was attractive, Mark was glad that he would most likely never see her again.

* * *

Author´s note: Yeah, I´m sorry this took a while, but I´ve come back to school and I have a lot of work to do, so update speed is probably not going to get that much better. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and if you did review please :)


	18. Power

"You wanna train?" Cora asked, and looked up from the book she was reading. She had a look of disdain in her eyes. It had surprised Derek to find her with one, because she never liked books as a kid. She preferred roaming the preserve and climbing trees, or at least he´d had to go out and get several times before dinner back before the fire. "Forget it," she dismissed him passively.

"You´re afraid, you can´t take me?" he asked casually. The easiest way to get Cora to agree with you was provoking her into doing it. Of course, you also faced the risk of her being even more stubborn, but Derek was willing to risk that. If he was being honest with himself, he felt like he needed to train. He was a little embarrassed by being beaten up and drugged twice in a relatively short time.

"Not at all," Cora said annoyed and in her usual defensive way. She clearly wanted Derek to leave her alone. To be honest, Cora´s mood was mostly please leave me alone. That much hadn´t changed from when they were kids. She had kept to herself when she was in the preserve, despite the fact that their mother didn´t like it. "Just reading."

"Right," Derek said, and without really knowing what possessed him to do it, but he tipped the sofa, she was laying on, so Cora slid down onto the floor, and barely managed to keep her balance. She did, however, land on her feet, the benefit of being a werewolf.

"What the?" Cora began, but Derek cut her off by playfully trying to hit her, and Cora grabbed his arm and pulled him down towards the floor. "What are you doing?" But as he´d kind of known, Cora wasn´t completely and utterly mad at him, there was a small smirk on her lips, as if she was finding this as funny as him. He´d certainly seen worse in the past.

Cora made a large jump to avoid Derek´s kick, and Derek was impressed. His sister definitely hadn´t been slacking on her training, since she had ended up stranded in Mexico. Derek liked sparring with her, and he needed the competition, so he wasn´t complaining. He still had not asked her what she had meant when she said she had a problem, but Derek figured she would tell him eventually. Derek and Cora had never been close before the fire, but when your only other living family is Peter, you kind of hoard together with the more decent relatives. Cora grabbed his arm, and shoved him away from her to give herself space to move around in, and probably come up with a counter move.

"You can do better," he told her, and Cora rolled her eyes just as she always did. Derek got on his feet, but Cora still kept a fair distance from him. It looked like she was considering doing something, but her face had turned into a stone cold mask, and Derek couldn´t read her. So instead of being defensive, Derek decided to make the counter move. Cora laughed slightly, when she dodged him. It was suddenly clear to him, that Cora had expected him to do that.

"You´re predictable," she countered him, and now it was he that was laughing. Cora seemed a lot more at ease, than he had seen her in a long time. This time Cora caught him off guard, as she managed to kick him towards the stairs. However Derek countered that with another attack, and they settled back into a rhythm of punching and dodging, and Derek could hear Cora´s pulse quicken. He was aware, that his own was too. But it was usual for both of them, since they had been sparring for quite a while by now.

He didn´t know how it happened, but suddenly Cora´s eyes flashed. But to Derek´s surprise they didn´t flash yellow, as you would have expected for a Beta, but it couldn´t be right. He had to have seen something wrong. Because when Cora pushed him away with an incredible amount of force, her eyes weren´t their usual steel, they weren´t yellow either. They were bright burning red like an Alpha´s. She growled, fangs showing in her mouth. Cora seemed to be practically glowing with strength, and he slowly got to his feet again. What the hell was going on? Once she could see, he was standing, she continued to punch at him, hit and attack him with such a speed and mercilessness, which despite everything she was, was so unlike Cora that it caught him completely off guard.

Just as he was beginning to think, that he couldn´t last that much longer, something happened. Suddenly Cora´s eyes fluttered shut, and she fell to the ground. Derek set into a run to catch her, and make sure she was okay. He picked her up from the floor, and Cora woke up a few seconds later. Her eyes back to their ordinary steely color. "What was that?" Derek asked her.

"That," Cora swallowed hard. "That was the problem Derek." Derek just looked at her, that was something else entirely, and definitely not the kind of problem he had expected it to be.

"Stiles." It almost felt like Lydia´s voice was echoing through his head, silken and soft against his ears. Stiles kind of smiled in his sleep, at least he imagined he did. Suddenly Lydia´s voice became sharp as a nail. "Stiles!" He jerked awake, and found himself in the library, with Lydia Martin sat opposite him. She was also staring at him, and he immediately avoided the investigating look she gave him. Stiles rubbed his eyes and saw stars, before he got his notes back in order.

"Are you okay?" Lydia asked, and she surprised Stiles, when she sounded very worried. He still wasn´t entirely used to the idea of Lydia Martin being his friend.

"I´m fine," Stiles assured her. He hoped, she would leave it alone. He really needed her to leave it alone, because he didn´t want to talk about it. "Just couldn´t sleep last night."

"That´s not a recurring problem is it?" Lydia continued. He should have been able to know, that Lydia would dig in it. Lydia sat down on the table, and side eyed him, she still clearly appeared concerned. Stiles was not entirely sure how to answer her question, he wanted to say that it wasn´t, but he knew he would be lying, and that his chances of fooling Lydia were kind of slim. "Silence indicates yes," Lydia said with a small sigh. She smiled slightly, but it didn´t quite reach her eyes. She slid down from the table, and took the chair on the opposite side of the table.

"No, Lydia you don´t-"

"Tell the truth," Lydia said quietly. Stiles met her eyes, and she looked completely sincere. Her mask was off, the face she put up for people like their classmates or peers was gone. "All of you lied to me for months. None of you told me a thing, so please don´t do that again Stiles." He was tempted to just get up and leave, study session with Malia be damned, but he didn´t. Because he couldn´t lie to Lydia, not when she specifically asked him not to, so he inhaled sharply and avoided her eyes.

"Yeah okay fine, it´s not the first time. Are you happy now?"

"Happy that you can´t sleep, or happy that I was right?" Lydia quipped, and Stiles gave her a small smile. She was making him feel better; she really had a hack for doing that. She looked like she was considering the answer, but the words never left her lips.

"Have you told Scott?" she asked. He shook his head, and Lydia didn´t look surprised. He hadn´t expected her too either. "You should."

"I know," Stiles replied reluctantly. "But I didn´t want to," he continued, not sure how to finish it.

"Why?" Lydia asked, clearly intent on finding out what he was hiding. He should have expected that.

"What´s with the third degree, Lydia?" Stiles replied, slightly frustrated.

"You´re dodging the question," Lydia concluded. "Why?"

"Lydia just-"

"Why?" Lydia repeated in a more stern tone.

"Okay fine, I didn´t want to bother him," Stiles admitted in a sharp tone. He was surprised by how good, it actually felt to say it. Lydia was excellent at winding him up, and getting things out of him, which he didn´t want to say. Now it was just a question of how to continue it, because he doubted that Lydia was happy with the explanation. "It´s just that the last few months with all the Nogitsune crap has been all about me, and Scott and Allison had to go through things too." He noticed that when one or two of her fingers brushes across his, but unlike last year where it would probably have given him a heart attack, he didn´t comment on it.

"You should tell him," Lydia said and looked him into his eyes. It felt she could see right through him. "Because I am absolutely sure, that Scott wants to help you." Her hand was barely brushing over his now, but Stiles still didn´t comment on it. Didn´t want to pull her out of this.

"Thanks," Stiles said with a small smile. He didn´t have to say just how grateful he was, because Lydia knew it already. He just knew she did.


End file.
